New Grief
by Yarfel
Summary: "She imagines a different world, like the Upside Down, but everything's the same, except her Mike survived. She opens her eyes, and is met only with absence. In this universe, El is alone" - AU story in which Mike dies in his attempt to distract the Demo-dogs from El and Hopper. How does Eleven deal with the loss of her soulmate? Find out my spin on it. DISCLAIMER, very sad :(
1. Chapter 1

**Ok so basically I read this amazing story by WanderingPaladin called "No More", A story in which Eleven actually dies from vanquishing the Mind Flayer in season two. We get to see Mike deal with his grief and it's really sad and really awesome and I can't recommend it enough. **

**So I was kind of thinking what would happen if Mike was actually the one who loses his life at the end of season two, and how Eleven deals with that.**

**This will inevitably be hitting similar beats to "No More" so I highly recommend you read that as well just so I don't get the bits of credit that aren't mine. But without further ado, enjoy -Y**

Chapter One: Denial

Eleven sits in her room, hugging her legs with her back against the wall. She's done this a lot recently, when she woke up after she fainted, She wore a confused look on her face, as if she was always lost in thought, and in truth she was. She wanted to see Mike, but Hopper always told her that she couldn't. It wasn't like she forgot what happened, she just hoped she was wrong, maybe Mike was still alive. Her mind flashes back to when it happened.

**November 1st, 1984**

...

El slowly rises her eyes from what felt like a deep sleep, Hopper embracing her in a hug. "You did good, kid" he says in a tired voice.

El can barely comprehend his words, too exhausted to think. The rising elevator slowly but surely taking them up to the lab. El sees the dogs falling like rain from the walls of the cave, it looks surreal. But as she retraces her thoughts and regains her senses, she can only think of one thing in particular, Mike.

"Mike… Mike" El softly let's out, Hopper's face surprisingly contorts into one of sympathy, "don't worry, we'll see him no problem". El flashes a light smile through the exhaustion, and Hopper smiles brightly back.

When the tram stops, Hopper picks El up by the legs and shoulder blades, taking deliberate steps through the flickering halls, walking away from the main elevator with a growl, as he sees the body's of five scientists and two dogs.

He purposely steers Eleven away from the bodies, in a futile effort to keep her from the sights, even though she's seen all of these on the way to the gate.

Hopper walks to the stairway and whispers to El, "are you going to be okay to stand?". El gives him a confused look, and Hopper responds "I've gotta carry someone else". El's narrowed eyebrows slight upwards in a look of worry, "bad man?" she whispers. Hopper shakes his head.

"No, he did help the scientists but he also saved me and Mike's life". Eleven's look of worry fades away "Mike…", her heart melts just as the thought of him.

She had tried her best to see Mike every day through the void, but to touch him… to almost _kiss_ him again, her stomach flutters to see him again.

Hopper made his way up the stairs as he slowly lowered El down onto a step. She gradually lifted herself up, with some strain, as her arms and legs still feel wobbly. She still gives Hopper a hardy nod, telling him she'll be okay.

Hopper bends down to see Owens, who is hardly awake at this point. "Hey… hey" Hopper says as he jostles Owens back to consciousness, his eye flicker open, "you good?" Hopper reiterates.

Owens slightly nods his head, "never better" he echoes Hopper's own words.

Hopper shows a slight smile, "okay we're gonna get you to a hospital, you fell down the stairs and hit your leg on a sharp end of a table, okay?" Owens nods as Hopper hoists his arm up to support him as the doctor hops on one leg.

He stops near El, who is still leaning on the railing, close to collapse similar to Owens. "You close the gate?" Owens asks, El nods as she stares at the floor.

Owens puts a hand on her shoulder, startling her slightly, as she still doesn't fully trust him. "Thank you" Owens says sincerely, with relief visible in his voice.

El nods again as she walks up the stairs with as much haste as she can muster, too anxious to see Mike to do anything else. As the group goes through the entrance of the lab, Owens sees the body of Bob, making a sound of disgust and pity.

"I saw him get attacked, even as you guys left…" Owens remarks. Hopper nods in acknowledgment.

El saunters over to the door, opens it, and holds it for Hopper and Owens as she rests on it.

They put Owens in the trunk as Eleven slinks into the back seat and collapses. "You doing okay?" Hopper asks from the front as the police car starts. "Mike… Miiiike-"

"Yeah yeah kid, you'll get to see him" Hopper sighs inwardly, as he now has to consider what it will be like with everyone knowing he was keeping her in a cabin. Eleven groans quietly.

El sees Hopper take Owens into the hospital, she was itching to see Mike again, and she was confused as to the nature of this 'not a bad man but kind of a bad man'.

After a few painful minutes, Hopper jumps back into the car and whispers to El, "alright, let's go see Mike". Hopper lights up as he sees El's reaction of joy and excitement.

El slips in and out of consciousness, her desire to be with Mike being the only thing keeping her from a deep sleep. She is awoken from her light sleep by the stopping of the car, as he hears Hopper whisper, "who the hell's car is this?".

She sees him look back at her in worry. "Stay here, someone new could be at the house" he says. El's face grows in annoyance, whimpering as she sees Jonathan's car, knowing that if they're home, then nothing should be wrong.

Hopper gets out of the car and looks back to make sure El wasn't following him. El listened as Hopper walked up to the house and quiet muffled sounds of taking ensued, followed by strange silence.

El can't handle not being able to see Mike, so she hastily opens the door, almost falling out onto the ground as she realizes how weak she is.

The night time October weather welcomes her with an instant shiver, she still walks up to the house, which is oddly silent. _Everybody's home, what's happening?_ she thinks to herself.

The dead leaves scrunch heavily over her worn down shoes as she gets closer to the house. A part of her doesn't want to go in for some reason, but she knows she wants to see Mike, so she silently walks up the steps and opens her door.

What greets her is a sight she didn't expect. The first thing she notices is Nancy silently sobbing in the corner, with Jonathan trying to console her. She has no idea what went wrong, but more and more of her is getting scared.

She looks to her right and she sees Joyce looking straight at her in a look of pity. She has her hands clasped up to below her chin with a slight hunch, appearing to be on the verge of tears.

Will lays there, completely out. _Maybe he's still sick? Maybe the plan didn't work?_ Eleven thought to herself.

She looked further to her right to see Hopper leaning on the wall, with a look of pity and regret, not a face she usually saw on Hopper, which scares her even more.

The more she appears to be confused, the more she sees the people around her scrunch up in sadness. She finally peers over to the kitchen to see Max, Lucas and Dustin at the table.

Max sits at the end of the table with a look of shock, with her eyes wide open and her hands on her temples, looking to be on the verge of tears as well.

Dustin and Lucas however are freshly stained with tears all over their face. As they see El, Lucas shuts his eyes and moves out of his chair, walking over to the end of the kitchen and leaning over the sink. Dustin's face bursts into a new set of tears as he silently cries.

But one thing she notices after seeing all there was to see, is that someone important to her was missing. Her face moves over to Dustin as she furrows her brows in worry, "where's Mike?" she asks softly, a small part of her fearing the worst.

Dustin closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly, making her heart beat faster.

"El… sweetie" El hears a voice from behind her, she whips around seeing Joyce looking at her, new tears leaking out of her eyes. "...Mike?..." She questions again, with a bit of a catch in her voice. Her breathing was now rapid as she looked sporadically around. _Where is he?_ she wondered.

As she looks around, no one seemed to be able to tell her what she was asking, and now she was starting to get terrified, fearing the absolute worst.

Hopper finally speaks up to her, with tears actually welling up in his eyes as well. "Eleven…" Hopper spoke, using her full name. El looks back to him with a scared look, close to crying.

"He's gone…"

Hopper says softly. El's face goes white, her stomach churns, and she wears a look of absolute horror, as she doesn't believe what she's hearing. _Gone? No… nononono_. El starts to breath so fast it sounds as if she's about to hyperventilate.

She can hear the high pitch whine that comes with each inhale, her sight starts to become blurred with tears.

"No" She says quietly as she shakes her head from side to side

Hopper closes his eyes, looking pained just to talk to her. "El-" He begins to speak, "No… Mike… nonono". She looks around the room, all eyes focusing on her. The room begins to go blurry and shake.

Blood oozes out of her nose, and she realizes that she's actually making the entire house shake, despite how exhausted she is, with new blood starting to come out of her ears and nose.

Hopper grabs the window sill with the shaking, and he speaks to El slightly more pressingly, "El… please calm down". El looks at him with a flabbergasted look, _you want me to calm down?_.

All the words she has learned in the past year escape from her, as she can only utter two words.

"Mike… nooo…." El falls on her knees, her fingers and toes go completely numb. She stands straight up and runs out the door.

She limps over to the car, where her stomach starts to stir, working it's way up her body as she throws up on the grass.

She can do everything but cry, her body is stiff and numb, and she doesn't understand any of it. She can't fully comprehend that Mike's gone, the thought of it just confusing her, it's so much to take in.

She lies there on the ground outside, unbothered by whatever may be happening in the house. "No… I promised..." she whispers to herself, one final time before fainting.

…

El wakes up from her dreamscape, but in too tired a state to think about where she is or what's going on around her.

She believes for the shortest of instances that she's in her room, and that all of this was some sort of bad dream. She can go back to watching him through the void, with at least a hope of one day seeing him again.

But as she becomes more and more awake, she begins to take in the things around her. She lies in Hopper's car, but it isn't moving.

She tiredly looks around to see Hopper still in the front seat, looking down at his steering wheel with his hat in his hands.

As the events of the past night replay through his head over and over, only one question pops into his head, _what the hell am I gonna do?_ He sits in his car, parked right outside the trail that leads to his cabin.

He stopped driving a while ago, but he just wants to think. His daughter is lovesick for this boy for an entire year, and then when he comes back into her life, he dies?

The kids had told them that apparently Steve was convinced to go into the underground Mind Flayer network, so they could steer away the Demodogs from him and El.

A part of him knows that this was a good idea, as he probably wouldn't have been able to handle all of the dogs. But damn, he did not think Mike and Steve were gonna get eaten.

He doesn't want to tell El how the kid died… but he knows she's bound to ask. He can't imagine what's going through his own kids head right now.

He needs to find someway to reach to his kid. El had always been, for lack of a better word, _obsessed _with Mike.

His brain was telling him that she couldn't be _that_ distressed, because she had only known him for a week. But his heart told him that Mike meant the world to her, and for that to be taken away… he really didn't know.

He also realized that this would be a nightmare to explain. The bodies were lost, so he couldn't even prove that they had died. What would their parents think?

He has a lot to think about, but a part of him really is sad that Steve and Mike died. That Wheeler kid must have been a god gift from heaven, the way El had described him, even if he never knew the kid well.

He breathed a heavy sigh, and got out of the car, lifting the half asleep El into the cabin.

**November 2nd, 1984**

Jim Hopper slams his hammer into the last nail. He finally finished. After he put El into bed, he went straight to work at picking up the heat lamps, cleaning up all the debris, and nailing blankets over the windows El had broken.

His stomach is still churning, as he's desperately afraid to face his daughter this morning. He had thought about preparing breakfast, but after all of the work he did last night, he decided just to make Eggos.

He doesn't know how El's going to be when she wakes up, and due to the way she shook the house out of pure shock last night, he prepares for the worst.

It doesn't take him long to realize how tired he is after he finishes. Luckily he has a bunch of extra sick days, so he's going to try to be there for El, and help her with whatever she needs.

He doesn't want to let the Eggos get cold, so he decides to wait until El gets up for him to prepare them. Hopper nervously shuffled around the table, setting plates and putting the toaster in the right place, all just to pass time as he waits for El to get up.

After about thirty minutes of sitting he checks the clock, 10:00 AM. Hopper begins to worry a bit. She's never usually _this_ late to breakfast, unless something happens.

A part of him wants to give El as much space as possible, but he decides to check up on her. He moves over from the kitchen to her room, making quiet steps with his thick socks in case she's still asleep.

What he sees confuses him.

He sees El, wide awake, sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs while she rests on the head of the bed. She's still wearing her day old mascara, and the gel in her hair is slowly coming off as her hair starts to go back to curls.

The dried blood is still visible from her nostrils and ears, but there seems to be a tad of dried blood coming from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes show no tears, but they are bloodshot, and she appears to be staring off into space.

This sight startles Hopper a little, but he knows how she must feel. After the doctors had told him that Sara was going to die, he didn't cry, not for a little while at least. He just… took it all in.

Hopper doesn't like to think that Eleven cared for Mike as much as him and Sara, but saying that to her was the last thing he would do.

"El?" Hopper talks, quieter than intended. El doesn't acknowledge his existence. "El… have you gotten any sleep?" Hopper asks.

El slowly shakes her head as she continues to look at the end of the bed. Hopper sighs. "El, i-if you want to talk, you can" he tries to remind her that he's still there for her, but she doesn't react to his words.

"well you at least need to take a shower, okay?" Hopper says. He doesn't want to argue with her, so he tries his best to be soft.

At this El finally moves her bloodshot eyes to Hopper's, to which he inwardly sighs. "okay." she states without a hint of emotion, but Hopper notices the strain in her voice. After another five seconds of no motion, El moves her hands and her legs, Hopper hears the cracking of most of the muscles.

_God how long has she been sitting here like that?_ he thinks to himself.

Once El stands up from her bed she waddles a little, but wills herself to stand up straight. While she stands for the first time since she found out about Mike, the breeze from her window hits her, and she realizes that it's still real.

A subconscious part of her hopes that it's just a really bad dream… and she's always disappointed when she sees that it's not. She sighs a little, it's small, but it's powerful. Hopper's face falls as he walks over to El and embraces her in a silent hug.

El doesn't emote to this. She doesn't even hug back. Hopper relents and kneels down to her level.

"We'll have Eggos for breakfast when your done, and I'll get us a new tv to watch, okay? I'm not going to work today so we can just stay here" he suggests, El once again lightly nods as she walks over to the bathroom. As she walks on in, she doesn't bother turning on the lights, shoving the door back with so little effort it doesn't even close.

Hopper opens the door slightly to turn on the lights, he sees El take off her jacket as she moves to get ready for the shower, Hopper sighs and closes the door.

A few minutes after he hears the shower turn on, he walks over to sit on the couch, but before he even gets the chance, his phone rings. He groans loudly before limping his way to the ringing telephone. He picks it up.

"This is chief Hopper" he says in an exhausted voice. "yeah, I know chief, where are you right now?" the snarky voice of Officer Callahan speaks up. "I'm taking a sick day today, I can't come in" Hopper tells him simply.

"Okay well sick or not, you gotta come in right now"

"Why?"

"You probably didn't hear, but three people died last night"

Hopper's shoulders slump at his words, he's not sure what he expected, but he had hoped for a day he could take care of his daughter, and maybe not deal with the events of last night.

Callahan takes Hopper's silence as an invitation to continue, "the radio shack guy Bob Newby, Steve Harrington, and Ted's son… Mike" Callahan takes a second to remember the kid's name.

Hopper debates over what to say. The deaths of these people and the crisis in the lab is forcing his hand, but he has to come out. "Yeah I do know…" Hopper thinks for a short second. "I still can't come in today, my daughter-" but he's cut off.

"Daughter?!"

"Yeah… well she's a daughter of my cousin, but she's not doing so hot so I've been keeping her with me for the past…" Hopper stops, he knows if he says year it will sound too unbelievable, but saying today would be even less convincing. "few months, and ummm, she was a really good friend of the Wheeler kid, so she's taking it a little rough."

The phone stays silent for a few seconds, until Callahan speaks up, "oh my god, I didn't know you were taking care of someone… why didn't you say anything?"

Hopper sighs, not wanting to come up with the whole story on the spot.

"she's a little late on her education because of how she was raised, so we've been taking it slow" he stops to analyze his words to make sure they sound believable.

"Damm… wait so do you know how the kid died?"

_Shit_. Hopper didn't realize how his story suggested that he knew the deaths of Bob, Steve, and Mike.

He remembers what Nancy and Jonathan has told him about their chemical leak idea, and he figures that Nancy must have explained Mike's death to her family, so he decides to work with that.

"I don't really know much about it… something about a chemical leak" he lies, pushing off the finer details of the story for later, maybe when he asks Nancy what she told her parents.

Hopper hopes that this is enough to shut Callahan up so he can be there for El, and thankfully, the officer relents. "Okay well, just thought I'd let you know, Karens been barking at me for the past six hours"

"And I'll get it figured out tomorrow… I just can't come in today" Hopper says, letting his frustrations make their way to his tone.

"If you say so Chief, but you better be here by tomorrow".

"I will… bye" Hopper quickly says, putting the phone back on the wall hastily.

He once again moves his head to check the grandfather clock in the back of the room, noting that it's been nearly 20 minutes since El's been in the shower. He sighs, and begrudgingly goes to check on his daughter.

Walking to the bathroom door, he knocks on it loudly, hopefully getting a response. His shoulders slump when no response is heard, even if he wasn't really expecting anything different.

He opens the door that she never bothered to lock and makes his way to the middle of the bathroom, stopping at the sink.

"Hey El?" he says louder than normal, still hoping to get her attention without him having to go up to her.

After a moment of silence he slowly walks forward and grabs the corner of the shower curtain. He hesitantly moves it to the side, and his heart stops at what he sees.

El lays there, head propped up on the wall of the shower while her body occupies the rest of the space given by the tub.

The makeup and hair gel isn't fully off her face, but she still stares off into space, seemingly contemplating her life.

Hopper lets a pained tear fall down his face as he sees her. Usually she values her privacy, always having clothes on in front of Hopper since the first month of her living in the cabin, usually she bothers to get clean, always making an effort to change out of her pajamas, brush her teeth, and look all around presentable, even when she almost never has a place to be.

But here she is, laying on the floor of the shower, as if she's taking a bath, just letting the water hit her face.

"El, come on, I need you to get clean at least" he begs, but to no avail. It hurt him so much to see her in such unfathomable agony, such that he couldn't really understand how she felt or what she was thinking.

Hopper had helped get her washed up, put clean clothes on her, and got her to sit at the table, even if she wouldn't eat.

**November 6th, 1984**

El sat in silence in her room, her stomach growled for food, and she had an itch on her cheek, but she ignored it. She desperately wanted to close her eyes, because they burned, but she ignored it.

The past few days had been weird for her, she really wanted to see Mike, and every once and a while she would forget that she couldn't. Moving wasn't hard for her to do, she just didn't want to move, she didn't want to do anything.

Every night her dad helped her take her clothes off and wash herself, because she didn't want to. Every morning her dad would prepare her food and put her in a chair, but she didn't eat because she didn't want to.

She saw her dad get distressed, she saw him feel afraid every time she didn't eat, and she was sorry. She wasn't trying to make him feel bad, or to make him worry, but it was the least of her concerns. Mike was… gone?

In the past two days, she began to walk around the cabin a little bit more, but more often than not she would sit.

Her dad would make phone calls to people a lot when he stayed home, and when he didn't stay home, he always had such an exhausted look on his face when he walked through the door.

She also stopped using her powers recently. It wasn't that she couldn't, she just didn't want to.

When Hopper was locked outside after she didn't open the door, he had to jump through one of the blanket covered openings to get in. He said it was a good thing they hadn't got new windows yet.

Hopper asked her if she was going to continue to not open the door, and when she didn't respond he started to use a key. El always felt bad about these things, but she didn't care enough to stop.

Today was the third day Hopper was going to stay home, and usually she would be excited to have some company, but now she wanted nothing more than to be alone.

Her reminiscing is cut off when she hears a light knocking from the door. She doesn't visibly react, but she's annoyed that her thoughts were interrupted.

She's met with the gruff voice of her dad as he opens the door, "Eleven," he says as he gestures his arms out to grab El by the shoulders.

When she continues to stare off, he shakes her, which finally makes her look at him.

She looks up and down at his face, taking him all in. A part of her just now realizing he was even here. He pauses as he opens his mouth, trying to find the right words.

"Do you remember Dr. Owens?" he asks softly, head cocked down with his eyes looking straight up to meet her gaze. El nods her head, "bad man" she says in a shrewd voice.

She realizes just now that she had lost her voice sometime ago, but she never realized. Despite her weak voice, Hopper's eyebrows raise up as he wears a hopeful smile, seemingly proud that she's talking at all.

It makes her feel bad that he's so happy just because she talked, but she pushes the thought aside. "Yeah, that's right" Hopper says, the enthusiasm distinct in his voice. "But he's not a bad man, he's come to help you".

El's brows furrow, "help… me?" she barely speaks above a whisper despite her attempts to talk normally.

Her speech seems to have reverted back to the way she talked when Mike had first found her. She thought it would make Hopper sad when she didn't use the words she had been taught, but he seems to be happy whenever she talks at all.

"Yes, El" Hopper shifts his body so that he's sitting on the bed with her.

"We all want to help you, but you just need to talk to us… please" he begs to her.

She can feel the sincerity in his voice, and her heart hurts a little to see the man she's grown to love sound so desperate to help her.

But her nagging voice keeps telling her that it would somehow be insulting to Mike if she doesn't think about him. And that maybe she's wrong about Mike, maybe they all are… he might still come back.

After all, Mike called her for three hundred and fifty three days just in case she was alive, her subconscious tells her is wouldn't be fair if she didn't do the same.

She moves around so she sits on her knees and faces Hopper, a look of whining on her face. "Don't want to talk… want to think… alone" in her final word she looks straight into Hopper's eyes, she doesn't want to hurt his feelings but she _needs_ to be alone.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, his look of despair turning into one of stubborn determination as his stony voice returns, "this is not negotiable" she gives him her signature confused look, which Hopper answers, "it means we're not going to argue over this, I want you in the living room in two hours, okay?" he says with a fierce resolve, putting emphasis on each word to make sure she understands.

El flicks her eyes down to look at her lap, she wants to argue but she doesn't want to make Hopper feel bad, "okay" she relents. Hopper gives her a quick nod as he stands back up and walks out of her room.

...

Hopper sighs as he finishes his call with Owens, hanging up the phone back on the wall. He rests his head against the wall as well. This past week has probably been the hardest… maybe second hardest week of his entire life.

The Harringtons and especially the Wheelers had given him hell the entire week, even though he was able to cover the story up thanks to Nancy's chemical leak idea, there were some holes that needed to be filled with Nancy and Jonathan's help.

It hurt his heart to see Nancy having to lie about his own brother's death, and he was pretty sure she at least really cared about Steve, so he couldn't imagine what it was like for her.

He thought about seeing how she was doing every once and a while, but for the police chief to check up on some random girl more than once would raise quite a few eyebrows.

Plus he had his own daughter to deal with. He moves his eyes to the door to El's room at the thought. _Like I'm really helping all that much_, he thought to himself sarcastically.

He knew she would grieve, pretty heavily he imagined, but he never expected this to be her reaction. Curled up into a ball all day, barely talking to her own dad at all? In such a hard time like this?

He didn't understand. But with Owens, there's hope. After all, he is a trained psychiatrist and one of the few people who actually knows El's whole story, so it's his best option.

...

El sits in her normal position, on her normal spot on the bed. She glances at the clock to see that it has indeed been two hours, but she decides to wait for Hopper to call for her, wanting to milk every last moment as if it were precious to her.

She hears the door opening without the secret knock, and she hears her dad and the bad man exchange greetings as they talk for a few minutes. She begins to grow nervous… afraid that the bad man will do experiments on her, or that he will think she's sick because she hasn't eaten much.

She remembers when Hopper had just left her a cereal bar on her nightstand in desperation a few days ago, because she hadn't eaten anything since Mike went away.

She didn't really want to, but she had grown too hungry to resist it, especially because Hopper wasn't making her sit at the table, so she begrudgingly ate it.

The following day, Hopper had walked in and saw the wrapper of the cereal bar, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he looked up at the ceiling. Neither one of them acknowledging the others existence.

Her thoughts are interrupted however, as Hopper knocks on the door. She hears the muffled voice of her dad, "kid, someone's here to see you" he says in a raised voice.

El sighs as she begins to move her legs and arms, the cracking of her joints once again reminding her of her exhaustion.

She slowly makes her way to the door, the nervousness of greeting the bad man pulling at her stomach more and more with each step.

The creaking of the door startles Hopper, who stood in front of it with his back turned, now shifting to look at her. She only peeks her head out of the door to look at the bad man.

He stands there in a relaxed position, holding a glass of water in one hand, with a cane in the other, and a large bandage wrapped around the wound on his leg.

The sight of him reminds her of a happier time. Even though the world was in danger from the Shadow Monster, she would still go through the pain of closing the gate a thousand times over to have her Mike back.

But to her shock, the doctor stands there with a toothless smile, looking… jolly. A far cry from what the bad men usually looked like.

She relaxes a little from his friendly presence, before remembering who he was, and what he did.

Her dad kneels down to meet her eyes, "this isn't some experiment or anything, he just wants to talk to you" he tries his best to console, but it does little to ease her nerves. She's about to retort, but the bad man speaks up.

"Maybe I should handle this, Hop" he suggests as Hopper nods and walks away.

The doctor limps his way to the girl, putting pressure on the cane where he would normally use his right leg. He looks at her with his eyebrows raised as he sticks up a hand.

"There's no need to be afraid, obviously I couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to" he says as he points to his leg and laughs at his own joke. El is unphased, but the man isn't discouraged.

"You see, I was actually moved to the Hawkins Lab from Cincinnati after Dr. Brenner had… well" he finishes by widening his eyes and moving his straightened hand across his neck. El furrows her brows at this gesture, but he laughs it off.

"So, that means we've never met in person, and I've never introduced myself Jan-oh" he snaps his fingers and points at her.

"What would you like me to call you? Jane, Eleven, or did your dad give you a new name" he gestures over to Hopper.

At this he finally waits for a response, and El tenses up. She's surprised the man hasn't commented or written down anything, especially related to her bloodshot eyes, greasy hair, or teenage stink.

El takes a few seconds to respond, hoping the man would relent, but he doesn't.

She finally works up the nerve to show him her harsh, lost voice. "M-Mike calls me El… short for Eleven" she states weakly, not looking up at him.

After a long second of silence, the man claps his hands together, startling her, "well then it's nice to meet you, El, my name is Dr. Owens, but you can call me Sam" he says.

Another surprising move is that he doesn't walk over to shake her hand, like Hopper had told her to do when meeting someone for the first time. She silently thanked him for this, desperately not wanting to touch anyone right now.

Owens walks over to a chair he grabbed from the dinner table, with Hopper bringing over another chair next to El.

He gives her a smile and walks away, she gives him a look that says _please don't leave_, and her dad picks up on it, shaking his head and raising his eyebrows in sympathy as he walks to the kitchen and leaves them alone. She knows he's only a stone throw away but it's still enough to make her feel as if it's just her and the bad man.

She looks over to Owens with a look of worry as he drags the chair over to sit across from her and grabs a notebook and pen.

She tenses up at the sight, knowing that the bad men always had a notebook and paper when talking to her.

Once again, to her shock, he picks up on it and asks, "do you want me to put these down?", her eyes widen as she thinks, _how does he know what I'm thinking?_

The doctor notices this too, "El, it's my job to understand people, you see…" he says as he puts the notebook down, "it's my job to understand people, because the more I understand, the less they have to tell me, and so it's easier for them to tell me what they want to".

He gestures to the empty chair, "do you want to sit down?".

El doesn't want any part of this terrifying interrogation, but she's already tired from standing, so she nods and moves to sit in the chair across from him.

Her shoulders slump once she sits there, looking him in the eye and ushering for him to continue.

"Man, you must be pretty exhausted" he comments with a light smile, El nods back.

"Not only that, but it sounds like you've lost your voice" he says, his eyebrows raised in concern. Here it is, here's the part where he talks about how she looks, and how sad she must be, but she admits that she feels a little better when he isn't holding the notepad.

She only nods again. "How much sleep have you gotten since it happened?" he asks. She looks at the ground.

"Don't like sleep… doesn't help"

"What doesn't it help with, El?", she doesn't respond to the question, moving on to something else.

"Wish I could call him" she admits. Owens' eyes narrow, maintaining his empathetic look.

"Do you think he's still alive?" his words make a shiver go up her spine as she sighs. To hear those words… _alive_ from someone else reiterates what she knows to be true but doesn't want to think about.

She shrugs, "he called me for three hundred and fifty three days, and he thought I was dead"

"So you feel you should do the same?" he guesses correctly, making her look up at him. She doesn't respond because she assumes he already knows the answer.

She watches as Owens reaches to grab not his notepad but his glass of water, finishing it off with a sigh of refreshment, like they do in the commercials.

This makes El realize just how thirsty she is, not having any water since yesterday, when she forced herself to gulp some down.

She subconsciously parts her mouth, tongue separating from the roof of her mouth as she feels the lack of saliva. Owens moves to refill his glass of water, walking to the kitchen as he continues to ask questions.

"So, have you been doing anything lately?"

El continues to look down at the floor, shaking her head, but as she realizes that he isn't looking at her, she speaks up in her whisper of a voice "no…"

She hears him walking back, so she looks up, only to see his hand extended with a glass of water, she readily takes it.

"Do you miss him?"

El takes a sip of her water before she looks back at the ground to think. "Don't know"

She hears Hopper shift around, she perks her head up to see him looking at her with a confused face.

She begins to regret doing any of this in the first place, _How could I not know? I'm must be heartless._ But she dares a glance at Owens, who to her shock is simply nodding his head in understanding.

A part of her is profusely thankful to him for this, as she feels less abnormal around him.

"That must be frustrating" he says in sympathy as he leans in slightly. She slowly nods while looking at him, "yes…"

"It's okay though, it doesn't mean you don't care about him", he stops for a second before continuing, trying his best to be sincere, as he rests a hand on her knee.

"Just because you don't cry, doesn't mean you aren't sad" he says, giving a look to a confused Hopper, who decides to turn back around and work on lunch for the three.

She gives him an apprehensive nod, feeling a little safer around him. "In fact I think you are very sad… but that's not a bad thing". She gives him a look that says _really?_ in a hopeful way.

"Think of it this way, how would you feel if he wasn't sad at all when you disappeared?"

She didn't consider this, she can only imagine how upset she would be if Mike didn't care that she was gone. "Bad" she states.

"But El, I won't lie to you, not talking to your dear old dad isn't going to make you feel better"

She looks over to Hopper, who was still turned but had stopped what he was doing, probably listening in intently on the conversation. El looks back to Owens with a confused look.

"But… you say it's okay to be sad"

Owens shakes his head lightly, "it is okay to feel sad, but what you're doing isn't making you sad… it's making you feel empty"

El lowers her head, recollecting on how she's been acting the past few days. "But I don't want to do anything else" she argues.

"That's okay" he offers, which makes El crack a smile in thanks, unaware that Hopper has started to watch them, his mouth open in shock at seeing his daughter smile in any capacity since Mike's death.

He knows it wasn't a real smile, like a smile of happiness and contentment, but it was still a small smile of thanks… _Maybe this Owens thing really was a good idea_.

"If you don't want to talk to him, then you don't have to until you're ready. But it will always be scary, so don't avoid him just because you're uncomfortable" he advises. El nods her head in understanding.

They're moment of silence is interrupted by Hopper, "okay everyone, lunch is ready" he says in a bored voice, trying his best not to be excited for El's shell breaking ever so slightly.

Dr. Owens face brightens up with excitement. "Great! I'm starving" he says as he walks back to the table, dragging his chair with him.

El's breathing speeds up a little as she looks at Hopper and sighs. "Don't want to eat" she tries her best to whine with her weak voice.

Hopper heaves a sigh, as he looks at her with an empathetic look. "El" he begins, but is cut off by Owens.

Hopper silently hopes that the doctor doesn't tell her it's okay to not eat, but he waits with held breaths.

"El, you've been hurt by a lot of people in your life, and you're hurting right now… but you don't need to hurt yourself by not eating and sleeping. It must feel like you're doing him a disservice by distracting yourself"

At this El feels her shoulders fall as she looks at the floor in shame, still in awe and slightly frustrated at how he reads her like an open book.

"But you and I both know that he wouldn't want you doing that to yourself"

El slumps in defeat as she begrudgingly makes her way to the table. She still doesn't want to do it, but she knows Owens has won, and she can't say no to her stomach for much longer.

…

The meal itself wasn't as lively as Hopper had hoped.

In fact, Owens had opted in engaging _him_ in small talk rather than El. They exchanged looks, Hopper's asking _what are you doing?_ And Owens telling him, _just roll with it._ After a while, Hopper begins to see what Owens might be getting at.

Slowly but surely El's expression had changed. At the beginning of the meal, she seemingly wanted nothing to do with them or the food, but as him and Owens were talking, she appeared to have something on her mind… perhaps the doctor was prompting her to speak of her own accord.

"Doctor… Owens?" she asks through her coarse voicebox. "Just call me Sam" he responds with a smile.

El ignores his request and continues with her question. "Been feeling… that I am empty… like you say" she admits, her eyes darting towards the food that she has only slightly touched.

Owens takes another bite of his sandwich before continuing, acting like her opening up and talking to him isn't a big deal, which to Hopper it definitely is. "And that's okay… it's a lot to take in"

El opens her mouth to speak, but quickly shuts it again, unsure of what to say, but Owens picks up on her emotions.

"I know you feel that if you stop sitting in your room and thinking about him, then you're hurting his memory, but Mike died so you co-" Owens closes his eyes and bites his tongue.

Hopper looks at him, confused as to why he stopped mid-sentence, he then steals a glance at El, who had shifted her glance away from Owens to the middle of the table.

He sees her chest rise and fall slightly faster as she gazes back up at Hopper with puppy dog eyes. "Want to go… to my room"

Hopper's brows jump in shock as he looks back at Owens, the doctor opens his eyes and nods in defeat.

He desperately wants El to eat more food and maybe get a little bit more help, but he decides to trust Owens, sighing inwardly as he spoke "okay, kid"

El quickly gets up and hastily shifts her way back into her room, quietly shutting the door. Hopper gives Owens a flabbergasted look, to which he slumps.

After a few good seconds of silence, he speaks up, "The hell just happened, doc?"

Owens gives Hopper a look, "that was my bad… dammit" he mutters to himself, and then looks up at Hopper, who is waiting for him to continue.

"I tried during the entire thing to not mention Mike by name, or that he died, and I let it slip" he rests his forehead on his hand. "What do you mean?" Hopper inquires.

"She still doesn't completely accept that Mike's dead. So to hear that from me is gonna make her upset"

"So you're telling me she doesn't believe you?"

"No, she does, at least a part of her does… it's that she doesn't want to"

Hopper's brows relent as he sighs and shakes his head in pity.

"Poor kid" he mutters to himself, strongly fighting back tears. Owens elaborates, "she doesn't want to believe he's dead, so quite simply she doesn't accept it, she's in denial Hop"

Hopper furrows his eyebrows yet again, "denial?" Owens nods his head, "you ever heard of the five stages of grief?"

"The five stages of grief?" Hopper repeats, Owens picks up on his apprehensiveness.

"It sounds worse than it is" however he stops before continuing as he widens his eyes a little and moves his hand to right, considering the truth to his previous statement.

"Not helping…" Hopper quips as he ushers for Owens to continue.

"It's a popular theory in psychology. Basically when people lose something or someone so valuable to them that they begin to grieve, certain patterns tend to emerge"

"What kind of patterns?" Hopper questions with concern.

"Well these patterns have been separated into five different stages, each one happening sometime after the other" Owens explains as he makes a fist with his hand and slowly opens up each finger. Hopper remains silent and pushes him to continue.

"The first stage is denial, second is anger, third is bargaining, fourth is depression, and the fifth is acceptance. Typically the more severe of a loss, the easier it is to recognize these patterns, and El is very clearly in the denial stage"

Hopper sits and absorbs the information as Owens elaborates.

"She's not going to be expressing her grief at all that much. In this stage people typically keep their emotions bottled up, because they don't fully accept the grief they're suffering from. In El's case, she doesn't want to accept the Mike is actually dead, and so she's hiding in her room, practically shielding herself from any truths that might challenge her thought process."

Hopper looks back at the table and puts his face in his hands.

"But eventually, she'll be forced to accept the truth whether she likes it or not, and when that happens, it's gonna hit her like a ton of bricks" he says as he moves his hands together, one of them fisted, demonstrating what he says with his hand gestures.

"There are some instances, where people never fully accept the loss and stay like that forever. Denial's tricky that way, you can get lost in it without help. But with both me and you looking out for her, it's not gonna happen" he assures him.

Hopper sits there, head still in his hands as he mulls it over. After twenty seconds of comfortable silence, he finally speaks up, "damn Owens… that's a lot to take in"

More silence follows.

"Are you gonna be okay?" Owens asks, startling Hopper for a second, he looks at him with wide eyes. "Am _I_ gonna be okay? I'm a little more worried about El" Hopper retorts, Owens however looks at him and sighs, "you're mental health is important too, this is gonna be hard, it's gonna be terrible depending on how things turn out"

Hopper catches on to what Owens is implying, but he desperately shakes those hideous thoughts from the deepest corners of his mind.

He shoots the doctor a glare, who only shrugs in response, "she's gonna need her pops… don't keep yourself from rest, like her". Hopper picks up on the emphasis of his words, realizing his rest means more than just falling asleep.

A now heavy silence hangs over them, neither one of them knowing what else to say, until Owens chimes in, "I better get going" he says as he stands up with his cane, he turns around again to look at him.

"See you next week"

"Yeah" Hopper says as the doctor begins to leave, but another thought crosses his mind, "hey… thanks for helping El" he says with true sincerity, "it means a lot to me" he explains.

Owens smiles, "I'm sure it does, and it's the least I can do after you saved my life" he replies. "I'll be seeing you, then" Hopper finishes as Owens nods and walks out the door.

…

Hopper lets his hand off the pan as he reaches to punch in the numbers for the microwave. Boiled hot dogs was never his favorite, but it's about all he has.

He second guessed himself when he first put the peas in the microwave, knowing El's intense hatred for them, but he shrugs it off, figuring that El probably wouldn't eat anyways.

He quickly turns on the new TV with the built in remote that he had bought just a few days earlier, figuring now was the perfect time to use it. Once he had finished it all, he set his meal onto a plate, leaving half a hot dog and a handful of peas just in case.

After about five minutes of eating in peace, he truly begins to realize how sad he's been without El as her normal self.

He wonders if she'll ever really get over this, after all, Mike was the first person she had ever gotten to know. He feels the all too familiar urge of tears begin well up in his eyes, not only for himself, but for his poor girl.

He silently lets his tears fall, putting his forehead up against his hand in shame as he wants more than anything to just be there for El, and for her to trust him. He can't imagine what she's thinking right now… what she feels. It eats him up.

He sighs to himself as he wipes the tears from his eyes, _c'mon Jim you've got to be strong._

Just as he lowers his head to contemplate, he hears the creaky hinges of a door squeak open. And lo and behold, there she stands, shifting her way out of the door, head down in shame. "...hungry" she says.

Hopper can't tell if she was whispering or trying to talk normally with a voice that's getting worse and worse, but he doesn't care, as his heart melts at the sight.

He slowly gets up out of his chair and walks to his daughter, kneeling beside her and taking her in a hug.

Hopper feels the tears leak out of him once again, not holding back in front of the person she loves most. El can feel the hiccuping motion of her dad's sobs, making her wobble as she whispers, "I'm sorry… didn't mean to hurt you"

Hopper pulls away, his eyes red and wet, "it's not your fault, I can't imagine what you're going through right now, El", she slowly nods as her stomach grumbles again. Hopper smiles, "c'mon, let's get you some food and water"

They walk over to the table and begin to eat in silence. Hopper chuckles as she still eyes the peas with apprehension. _Even with all that's happening, you still won't touch those peas._

He gives a sincere smile as he bends over and fumbles her curly hair. She smiles… once again, not a real smile that she used to give when he did it, but a small smile of appreciation nonetheless.

As the pair gets close to finishing their meal, Hopper speaks up, "you think Owens helped?" she stopped fumbling around with her peas and looked up at him, "don't know" she responded after a few seconds.

Hopper has a slight hunch that he really did help her, because he knows that she would have never come out to eat without the talk from the doctor.

But he also knows what he said at the end, and he could feel that she isn't ready to admit to herself Mike really is dead.

His stomach churns at the thought… the day when she fully realizes that he's gone, and he honestly doesn't know how she'll react, which scares him even more.

"El"

"Yes?"

Hopper pauses for a moment, forming his next words carefully, "I know you're not ready to really talk to me about how you feel… and I respect that" he sees her face shift in relief, which he thanks himself for.

"But when you're ready, El, I-I will always be there" he says as a fresh batch of tears begins to coalesce in his eyes.

El thinks for a bit, and slowly gets up from her chair and walk toward Hopper, embracing him in a hug, "thank you… I trust you dad".

Hopper feels the tears come back in full force, as that was the first time she had ever called him dad.

He holds her in his arms for what seems like hours, neither one of them wanting to let go of the other, but as Hopper reads the grandfather clock, it says 9:26. With a heavy sigh, he moves to part from El, but he notices that she doesn't budge.

He takes a good look at her face and sees that she's in fact completely out. She had finally gotten some much needed sleep.

He had thought about shaking her awake, but he figures she needs this, and plus the movement that he has done hasn't even woke her in the slightest.

He slowly carries his only family back into her room, in the same position he held her when she shut the gate just about a week ago. _How could things change so dramatically so fast?_ He wonders to himself.

He gently plops her down onto her bed, noticing that the covers haven't been moved since she left and got that make over, which is something he'll need to ask her about sometime in the future.

He sighs at the fact that she probably barely slept at all, and if she did it was because her body quite simply forced itself to.

It all doesn't matter now though, as he sees his daughter, for the first time in a week, actually asleep. It isn't a comfortable sleep, and he can't even guarantee it's a happy sleep, but her body just can't take any more.

Hopper has no idea what he's going to do. He loves her with all his heart, she's the only one he really loves anymore, and to see her deal with this breaks his soul into a thousand different pieces. El told him she trusts him, and Hopper's not going to let that trust go to waste.

His feeling of sadness is replaced with a fierce resolve. In the end he doesn't even know how to help her, but god dammit he's going to try.

**What did you guys think? Please leave reviews telling me what you liked and disliked, I plan to have a chapter for each of the stages of grief, and maybe a few others dedicated to fleshing out a post-Mike world rather than a post-Mike Eleven, so let me know if you think that's a good idea, and of course go and read "No More" if you haven't yet because it will make you cry. Thank you all! -Y**


	2. Chapter 2

**Many Greetings! This will likely be the longest chapter I end up doing, unless I find a lot of content to work with for my other chapters. But yeah, this was just over twice as long as the first chapter, just because there was so much stuff I needed to happen and couldn't fit very snuggly into the other chapters. I hope this explains why it took me so long and I hope even more that you enjoy this chapter, because it actually made me cry. Once again please leave reviews because they literally make my day and help give me new ideas for some possible scenes. A quick thank you to GIANTPANDAMAN for giving me an idea for one of my scenes. As usual, enjoy! -Y**

Chapter 2: Gone

**November 1st, 1984**

"No… take a right up here" Nancy says as she attempts to recall Hopper's words. She closes her eyes a few times before realizing she needs to see where Jonathan is going.

Jonathan drives is rickety automobile through the cold nightfall. He has his headlights on as he squints, attempting to recognize anything so he could gauge where they might be. Nancy sits beside him in the passenger's seat, doing a slightly better job at remembering how to get back into town.

She doesn't know how Jonathan just forgot the directions Hopper had given him before they left to his cabin, after all she remembers more and she wasn't even listening that much as she got into the car.

Joyce sits in the back, holding Will in her arms as she makes _shhh_ noises to him. Every once and a while she would throw in an "it's okay, I'm here" before going back to consoling him.

Nancy resented her doing this, _he was asleep anyways? It's not like he's gonna hear her, why doesn't she help us remember where to go? _But she still admires her love for her child.

Nancy lets out a long sigh, putting her fist to her forehead, desperately trying to remember where to go. Jonathan picks up on Nancy's struggle, and he moves to put a hand on her leg.

"Hey, Nancy, it's not a big deal, the most important thing is we got it out of Will" Jonathan consoles, Nancy looks back at him with a worried face, her paranoia kicking into high gear. "Yeah, but El still has to close the gate… what if they can't do it?"

Jonathan sighs, keeping his eyes on the road. "Well then we at least won't have to worry about him" he gestures his back to Will. Nancy looks back at her lover, amazed at how he seems to be an optimist even in times like these.

"Where the hell are you?" Joyce finally speaks up as she looks out the window of the car. Jonathan shrugs his shoulders in response, "that's a good question" he quips, Nancy smirks at the sarcasm.

Joyce shakes her head as she squints to recognize the road. "Nonono, we're on the north side, Jonathan. The boy squints again at his mother's words, and his eyes widen. "Ohhh" he says as he pulls to the left,

…

The four get back to Joyce's house from there with relative ease, stopping near the left side of the yard and walking out. Jonathan and Joyce grab Will from either side and hoist him up to the steps, as Nancy goes to open the door to help them.

When she walks inside though, she's met with a cold silence, a thought instantly making its way up to her head, _where are the kids?_

She turns back around to look at the other two, who are making their way up the steps.

"Guys" she says in an urgent voice, making Joyce and her son stop in their tracks, they both give her a questioning look. "The kids… they're gone" she says.

Jonathan widens his eyes, "what? What do you mean they're gone?" he starts to move Will more quickly, startling Joyce into picking up the pace as well. Once they're inside, they lay Will onto the couch and look around.

"Steve's gone too" Jonathan remarks as Nancy and him look around, Joyce walks into the kitchen to make a phone call, but she notices something. "Guys!" she yells to Nancy and Jonathan. They both instantly stand up and run to the kitchen.

There lies Billy, completely asleep, with a long syringe laying on his side. Jonathan narrows his eyes, "is that that new guy?"

Joyce chimes in, "who cares? Why the hell is he in my house?". Jonathan moves to wake him up, shaking his shoulders. After a little bit, he goes straight for a slap to the face, but to no avail. He stands up and shakes his right hand, a little sore from the impact, "he's out cold" he notes.

Nancy's breaths start to accelerate as another thought pops into her head. "You think he did something to the kids and Steve?" she worries. Joyce shakes her head. "What would he be able to do? Even if he kidnapped them or something… that wouldn't explain what he's doing _here_" she ponders.

Joyce sighs and lets her shoulders slump, "give me a hand with him Nancy" she says in her calm voice and she grabs his legs. Nancy grabs the shoulders, but even with both of them they struggle to lift the muscular teen.

They eventually do get him into a closet and shut the door, but they hear Jonathan from the living room.

"Hey guys? Didn't that guy have a Camaro" he yells from the other room. Nancy stops to remember, "I think so? Why?" she asks as her and Joyce walk their way to the living room, where they see Jonathan opening a blind and peering out the window.

"I think I know where the kids went" he quips. Nancy runs out the door to see the headlights of a Camaro stop right in front of the house, almost hitting it. She stops for a second, expecting Steve to come out with the rest of the kids.

When she squints her eyes to see who's in the front seats, she's shocked to see Lucas in the passengers and Max in the drivers spot.

Nancy can see Lucas staring up at her, making a face she can't quite see, and she watches as Max rests her head on the wheel. Nancy slowly walks down the steps, followed by Jonathan and Joyce.

It's at this point they decide to get out. Nancy looks back to see the doors of the back seat open, Dustin being the only one to come out.

Jonathan looks at them all and speaks with his signature nervous voice, "h-hey where's Steve?"

"And where's Mike?" Joyce adds on. Nancy just looks at them… fear overtaking her whole body. The kids just stand there, all with their heads down. Silence fills the area, with only sound being that of the crickets in the surrounding night.

Each one of them slowly realizes what must have happened. "Kids!" Joyce yells with tears forming in her eyes, ushering them to explain.

Lucas and Dustin jump a little bit, but don't respond. Max is the one to look up and answer them. Her hair is messy, shirt and pants covered in goop, and her eyes are wide in shock.

"They… they didn't make it" she speaks in a bewildered voice, almost as if she doesn't believe it herself.

Nancy holds her hands up to her mouth and gasps almost immediately. She doesn't know whether she should believe them or not, the older teens stand there for a while, Nancy especially taking it in.

Multiple possibilities playing in her head as to how he died, what would happen next, why he would risk his life. She's sad, angry, shocked… _this can't be happening_.

"How… wha- I don't understand…" Jonathan finally pipes up. At this Dustin chimes in. "We went to Upside Down tunnels, to distract the Demo-dogs… Steve and Mike weren't able to climb out before they got them" Dustin's voice is soft and full of regret.

"Oh my god…" Joyce remarks as she puts her hands on her mouth. Jonathan immediately turns to Mike's sister, "Nancy…." he tries to console, reaching his arm out to touch her shoulder.

Nancy runs back to the house, not bothering to shut the door on her way in. She runs to the corner of the living room and begins to sob uncontrollably.

The tears stream down her face as she feels Jonathan walk up to her and embrace her. She weeps into his shoulder.

Mike had always been that stupid little brother that she always found annoying, but to know that she'll never see him again… that she failed to protect him. She doesn't believe it, that Mike isn't going to be a part of her life anymore. She wails into Jonathan's chest. Not knowing anything else to say, Jonathan just sits and comforts her.

He remembered how it felt. To see that body… the body of his own little brother. It had made him sick to his stomach, to see the paleness of him as the blood had stopped pumping.

To see the kid that was his only anchor, in getting through the divorce. He never thought he deserved it, he was just a shy little kid, not ready for the horrors of the real world, and he had to die.

Or so he thought. He remembered how lucky he thought he was, that Will was alive at all, but to see how it traumatized him still broke his heart. He understands more than most what it feels like to lose a little brother.

Nancy fights back the anger that rises within her. Steve… that god damned idiot, getting himself and Mike killed. Jonathan… _it's easy for him to be like this, he never lost Will_. Her cries grow silent as she kneels down onto the floor in a snail position, crying into her arm.

She sees Joyce usher in the rest of the kids, who are either in shock, or crying themselves. They all walk into the kitchen, and Joyce slowly slides her back down the door until she gets into a sitting position once she closes it. She clasps her hands together and rests her forehead, sighing heavily with a catch.

Nancy watches as everyone turns to silence, nervously awaiting Hopper, she sits there in her corner, weighing the consequences of this event. _What are Mom and Dad gonna say? _She thinks to herself.

But as she slowly realizes how long it's been, she too begins to grow nervous. She hopes that Mike and Steve died for a reason, and that they were able to get the gate closed.

Another few minutes pass until they hear the familiar roar of the police car. There's a collective sigh across the room, as they hope that both Hopper and El have made it out okay. Joyce moves to stand up, preparing herself to tell Hopper what happened.

The door swings open rather quickly as all eyes turn to meet Hopper, and before anyone can say anything, he opens his mouth and points with his thumb back outside, "whose car is that?" he says in a slightly worried tone.

When he finally stops to take a look around the room, his worried face only becomes more intense, as their tear stained eyes, particularly the ones of Joyce, meet his. "Don't tell me you couldn't get it out of him" he says as he shakes his head in a stone cold voice.

Joyce shakes her head with closed eyes. "He's okay… It's Mike" she stops to see Hopper's face, which turns to one of confusion and slight fear.

"He died, Hop" she states simply. Hearing it again brings new tears up to Nancy's eyes as she sobs, which Hopper notices. The police chief's eyes widen at the revelation.

"You've got to be shitting me" he says as he begins to pace around the room, running his hands through his thinning hair, ignoring the hat he has on. "How the hell?-" he begins but Jonathan interrupts him to explain.

"The kids went with Steve to the tunnels to distract the dogs so you could get to the gate… Mike and Steve must've got killed"

Hopper's brows shift from a furrowed position to a neutral one as he realizes what this explains. _So that's why the dogs left us alone when we got to the tram…_ he thinks. So many other questions went through his head, but they were all interrupted when he heard the slight creaking of the door again, to see El standing there.

She looks weak and pale, the veins on the side of her face are visible, as the blood must have completely left to go out of her nose. The blood coming out of her nose and ears is dried, and her clothes reek of exhaustion. But when she locks eyes with Nancy's, the fear in her eyes becomes palpable.

Nancy watches as El slowly realizes that Mike's gone, and it breaks her heart into a thousand pieces, to see the girl her brother cared so much about that it made him depressed for a year completely collapse under the weight of his passing.

The house begins to shake as Hopper tries to console his daughter, but to no avail. The shaking becomes more and more violent until she falls to her knees, the house taking a final slam as pictures and kitchenware fall onto the floor. It isn't long before the girl runs out the door, and Hopper follows.

A few minutes later, Hopper walks back in, getting worried looks from Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy. "She fainted… out cold in my truck" he elaborates, taking a seat on a rocking chair, with an exhausted sigh. "She's not gonna take this well" he remarks.

Nancy hesitates a bit before standing up and looking Hopper dead in the eye. Her eyes are puffy and red, "Hopper… what are we gonna tell my parents?" she says apprehensively. He sighs in return, "I don't know kid… my only guess is that we work with the chemical leak idea you and Bauman came up with"

She nods in return, but Hopper can still feel her worry and fear, "it's gonna be okay, kid" he reassures her, and at this Nancy's eyes once again begin to form tears.

"I don't wanna lie to my mom" she says in a high pitched whine, fresh tears cascading down her face. Jonathan stands up to once again console her, "Nancy…" he says before he hugs her. She hugs back fiercely.

"Listen, Nancy, I know this is hard, but we don't have a choice" Hopper stands up before he continues, "you'll need to tell your parents that Mike became very sick…" he stops to think about his plan. "And that his pulse went dead"

"Well then where's the body?" Joyce questions, poking a hole in this hypothetical explanation. Hopper sighs, "maybe… umm" he ponders the question.

Nancy speaks up again, stuttering from all the tears she's shed, "we could blame that on the scientists too, maybe they took the body and burned it, along with Steve's"

Hopper nods his head in agreement. "Yeah, that could work" he agrees.

…

Nancy gets out of the passenger seat of the car after he pulls into the driveway of her house, giving a final look of thanks to Jonathan.

He looks back, "If you ever need me, I won't be far" he encourages, Nancy nods, closing the door and watching as the car rolls away off into the black distance.

She walks up the small steps to her house, her feet numb from the hyperventilating. Each step is chosen carefully, so that she doesn't collapse from the shock of it all.

She quickly opens the door, walks in, and shuts it as quietly as possible. Once she shuts it, she rests her head on the frame, taking all of the events in.

She had formulated a plan with Hopper, and was all set to shut the lab down, but lying to her parents was going to be hard.

She thinks about El, and what she must be going through. She didn't know the girl well, but if she was half as depressed Mike was when she was away, then she's definitely not taking this well.

She flinches as she hears the hasty footsteps of what is most likely her mother coming down the stairs. "Nancy!" she hears from behind her. She had rehearsed what to say to her mom for a good thirty minutes, but now that it was here, she didn't even want to look at her.

"Nancy, where the hell have you been for the past two days! I was afraid you'd gotten lost! And where's Mike?!" she berates. At her final question, she sees Nancy tense up, but she doesn't step down.

Nancy turns around with tears forming in her eyes. "Mom…" she lets out, not being able to finish. Karen's face turns to one of sorrow as she briskly walks up to Nancy with her arms open, the girl reciprocates, walking up to her mom as they embrace each other in a tight hug.

After a few seconds of hugging, Karen pulls herself back and looks at her daughter, "sweetie, what's happened, are you okay?"

Nancy cries out again, sobbing in front of her mom for the first time since she came to her about Barb.

Karen's motherly instincts shoot up, but at the moment there's nothing she can do but watch as her eldest child cries her eyes out, making her stomach churn at the possibilities of her situation.

"Mom… it's Mike…" she says, crying harder into her shoulder. Karen waits for her to continue. "He's… Mom, he's dead" she weeps out.

**November 3rd, 1984**

Hopper lays on his table alone, uniform and hat clad, ready to start out the gruesome day ahead of him. The sunshine of the new morning makes its way through the blankets and shines in his face, making him groan each time he slights an eye open.

It only takes another minute of sitting there until the toaster oven dings. He curses to himself, not wanting to get up if it means having to do everything else that comes with the day. But alas, he finds it within him to grab the table and hoist himself up, sauntering over to the toaster where he grabs four eggos.

They were running low on food for a while now, so he knows he needs to get the groceries today as well, but for now, Eggo's will suffice. He only needs two, so he grabs another plate and sets it across from him, putting the other two on that plate. _She's gotta eat sometime _he tells himself.

Within ten minutes, Hopper gulps down the two eggos and makes his way over to El's door. He decides to open the door instead of knocking, silently hoping that she'll be asleep, but not holding his breath.

As he opens the door, he is welcomed by a waft of body odor that's coming off of his daughter. He's met with her usual position on her bed. Her eyes are still bloodshot, her hair has become slightly greasy, and her clothes are a day old.

She still has the look on her face, that tells him her mind is elsewhere. He sighs, "El, you gotta use that deodorant, okay?" Hopper instructs her.

Only recently did he begin to notice that she had started to emanate a stench, so he had to go through the whole spiel about how it was natural for her body to stink at her age and that she needed to stop stressing over it.

But a part of him already misses that El, the one that was curious yet frightened by everything, and now she just doesn't do anything.

"Have you brushed your teeth?" he takes her lack of a response as a no. He relents his questioning and sighs, "I'm going off to work, I'll be back by six'o'clock, please El, don't starve yourself" he means to give El the impression that he isn't serious, but a part of him really does fear that she won't eat or drink until her body can't take it.

He slowly walks away from her room, leaving her door open in hopes that she'll at least get up and close it. He opens the door to the cabin, and lightly shuts it, stepping over the wire and making his way to the car.

…

Hopper stops the car in his own reserved spot in the parking lot of the police station. Even the sight of such a dreary place like this is enough to make him lament over the better days, when none of this had ever happened. He makes his way to the entrance and is immediately filled with the familiar smell of cigarette smoke.

He strolls over to the front desk, where Flo gets up and stands in front of him. She looks at him and her face quickly turns to one of confusion. "What happened to you, chief?". Hopper flashes a look at her, feigning innocence, "what?" he asks, her shoulders slump as she sighs, "there's no cigarette between your teeth Hop" she says nonchalantly, Hopper shakes his head and looks down.

"How's your daughter doing?" she asks in a suddenly sincere voice, Hopper opens his mouth in shock, and she elaborates, "Callahan told me".

He didn't expect word to travel _this_ fast. By the end of the week the whole town might know at this rate, he sighs to himself, shaking his fishy feeling by reminding himself that the lab's days are numbered, and no one knows where he lives, save Joyce's group from the day before yesterday.

_This had to happen eventually_ he tells himself, and it was true, considering El's sorry state, that if she didn't get out she could be in serious trouble.

Hopper relents and talks to the woman he's trusted for years. "She's not doing very well… she had a crush on that kid that died and just sits in her bed all day"

Flo gives him a look of understanding, "I'm still happy for you" she explains. She was one of the few people who knew Hopper well before Sara died, so she saw his shift in personality once he lost his first daughter. "It explains the way you've been acting for the last few months, I couldn't quite pinpoint it" she remarks.

Hopper knows he had been different ever since El came into his life, which was more than a few months ago, but obviously Flo takes the explanation she gets.

"Thanks Flo" he says through his gruff and surly voice, but he means it.

Flo smiles and hands him not an apple like she usually does, but a cigarette. Hopper gives her a confused look, "you're gonna need it" she states, giving Hopper a look, he smiles back and walks into the office.

He's greeted by officers Powell and Callahan, as usual. Powell speaks up, "mornin chief, what's this I hear about a new daughter?" he gets straight to his point like he always does. "Just doin a favor for my cousin Terry, alright?" he lies effectively enough.

"How old is she?" His friend inquires, Hopper sighs inwardly at all the questions, but doing anything other than answering them would raise eyebrows.

"Thirteen" he says as he lights his cigarette, Powell gives an "oof" and a pained look, "sounds like a lot of fun" Callahan quips. Hopper laughs it off. "Hey Callahan you hear about those deaths?" Powell moves over to make conversation with his colleague.

"Yeah man, just talking to the chief about it yesterday, he says it's some kind of chemical leak that killed 'em off" Callahan responds.

"Chemical leak?" he says skeptically as he turns to Hopper, "that's what I heard" he shrugs as he continues "some bad stuff from the lab".

"Damn… well if that's true then we won't be seeing that place for much longer" Powell replies. Hopper chuckles, "yeah, if we're lucky" he quips.

Their small talk is interrupted by Flo, "chief, the Wheelers are here to see you" she says. Hopper's face falls. "Bring'em to my office, I'll meet them shortly" he says with a serious tone.

Flo nods and walks back to the front desk in the other room. About half a minute later, Hopper finishes his cigarette and makes his way to his office. His fellow officers giving _good luck_ looks to him.

As he walks in he sees Karen and Ted in separate chairs, holding hands. Karen however immediately stands up once she realizes he's here, and Ted does the same, albeit more slowly.

Hopper takes a good look at her. Her makeup is messy, despite there being little on, her hair is in bundles, and her eyes have bags under them. But most crucially, he sees the emotion in her eyes, the fear, and anger, the confusion, the shock, he realizes he's looking at a reflection of himself at that time.

He turns around to softly closes the door behind him and turns to the silent couple. "Before we get into anything, I wanna say that I heard what happe-"

"You better know what happened!" Karen barks, not having the patience for calm talk, "and you're gonna explain yourself!". Hopper waits a short second before responding, "and I just wanted to say that… I'm sorry" he adds sincerely. Ted nods his head, "thank you chief, that means a lot to us".

Karen however is unphased by his talk, if not insulted.

Hopper can tell by her look, so he starts to continue, "so…" he walks over to his chair. "Why don't I tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know" he lies at the end, pretending he isn't aware of everything they've been told by Nancy, "and maybe we can figure this thing out".

"Okay." she states in an unemotional voice before sitting back down, "why?" she asks.

Hopper stops, hoping she would continue, but she doesn't. "Why what?

"Why is our son dead, Hopper!" she shouts, tears filling her eyes. Hopper knows how she feels… he knows perfectly what it's like to lose a kid, and so he doesn't lose his patience. "I don't know" he states simply, Karen's frown lifts a little bit from confusion, being caught off guard by this answer.

"What I do know is that we got a call two nights ago from your daughter Nancy, she was panicked and afraid, said her brother had fainted and wasn't breathing" he fibs, having gone over this story in his head thousands of times since it happened.

"We got there as soon as we could, but by then it was too late… the paramedics had announced him dead. I'm sorry"

Karen puts her hands on her face as she begins to sob, Ted brings his arm around her shoulders in condolence. "Why did he faint and stop breathing" he asks through his breaths.

"We don't know" Hopper responds, "we've got our guys looking into it… the prevailing theory is that it has something to do with the lab"

"The Hawkins Lab?" Ted responds, and Hopper nods. "From what we know, Mike Wheeler, Steve Harrington, and Bob Newby were all within a one mile radius of the Hawkins Lab for an extended period of time". Karen's face contorts into puzzlement as she thinks about his words.

"You're saying that it's their fault?" she asks.

"Well, according to my friend Sam Owens, who works at the lab, there was some sort of chemical leak, a bunch of scientists lost their lives, but they were covered up, and it happened around the same time Nancy called the station" he finishes, sitting back to let it sink in for the Wheelers.

"What was my boy doing next to the lab?" she speaks through tears. "I'm sorry Karen, but we don't know for sure" he sees her face fall as she looks down.

Hopper doesn't want to give them this kind of despair, so he adds in a small bit "We know Will Byers goes to the Hawkins Lab for checkups, so that gives us some sort of link between Bob Newby and Mike, and we know the Harrington's house is closer to the Lab than most, so it's possible he was just hanging out with his friends in the woods".

Karen talks with Hopper for a few more hours about different possibilities on what happened, some of which hit pretty close to the truth, but none were completely right.

Hopper glances up at the clock, it reads 11:11, taking his mind back to his own daughter.

"I'm sorry, guys, I really am. I know what it's like to lose a kid, and I know that this isn't something that you're going to get over" Ted nods with tears in his eyes as Karen cries into his shoulder.

"Have you tried getting into contact with any of Mike's friends? They're usually by his side at all times" Ted suggests.

"No, I haven't gotten to them yet, but I know they know about it"

Ted narrows his eyes, as Karen begins to listen in, "well then how _do_ you know?"

Hopper's eyes widen, he realizes that he's going to have to talk about El in front of her crush's parents. "Yeah umm, I at least know that my daught-"

"Daughter?!" the couple says in unison, Hopper had expected them to cut him off like they did, just like every other person he's told.

"Yeah, I haven't told many people about this, but my cousin's been in what the doctors call a vegetative state, and her mom can't take care of the kid anymore either, so she's been staying with me for the past few months". The Wheelers continue to stare at him, so Hopper continues with his spiel, something he's going to be getting used to saying whenever people ask.

"My cousins mom never really was a good parent, so Jane's been at a really early education level, and she's a bit traumatized from all of the nutty parental figures in her life, so she's really shy and doesn't like to go out much. I figured I didn't need the whole town breathing down my neck about her when I first adopted her".

Ted and Karen stare at him wildly, "wow, chief, I didn't know you were being a father for the past few months" Karen responds.

"Yeah, Mike was actually the one who first made friends with her, even though she could barely talk. So he was really special to her… needless to say she's taking it really rough".

"Oh my god" Karen says as she meets her eyes with Ted's, "our Mike, making friends with a girl" she says as she begins to cry, but with a smile, Hopper smiles. "Pretty sure she had a big crush on him too" he laughs. Karen nods, "if only he knew".

"I think he did…" Hopper adds in, followed by a silence, with Karen thanking him for the consolement with her face.

"So how does she know about Mike's death?" Ted questions, Hopper shrugs his shoulders "she's barely talked to me since it happened, couldn't ask her if I tried", Ted sighs at this. "I wish I could meet her" the mom adds, talking to herself more than anyone else, "well, she's a mess right now, but soon… I promise" he says taking a page out of El's book, and at this Karen stands up and shakes his hand.

"Thank you for your help Hopper" she finishes with a teary smile, as Ted stands up and likewise shakes his hand.

"I'll call you guys if any new information arises… meanwhile I want you guys to keep in touch with Nancy and Holly, to make sure they're okay" Hopper says as he ushers them out the door.

"We will" Ted responds as they begin to leave his office.

…

7:00 PM, it's already pitch black out. Hopper walks with his flashlight up the familiar trail, scanning the ground for the small amount of gravel that shows him the way.

It isn't long before he arrives at his cabin. The house itself is completely dark, with no light coming from within, which causes Hopper to worry a little bit, not that he actually expected El to get up and turn on any lights.

He walks slightly faster than he was before, up to the house and performs the secret knock.

_Knock knock, knock, knock knock knock_

This is followed by silence. He performs the knock again, louder this time, his paranoia spiking up. When this is once again followed by silence, he mutters to himself, "shit".

He knows that El probably isn't in the greatest of moods to use her powers and open the door, but she wouldn't leave him out in the cold _would she?_

He begins to shout through the door, "El, it's me! I know you don't want to use your powers right now… god you're probably not even paying attention to me right now, but you've gotta let me in okay? I'm gonna freeze to death!".

Still silence.

"_Shit shit shit_" he lets out, starting to worry if she was even in the cabin, or if she had run off. He looks around, and notices that his windows are still replaced with old blankets.

He sees this as his only chance to get in, so with a hardy sigh, he walks over to the nearest window and attempts to climb through. He puts his right leg over the window with some strain, unattaching the blanket from the nails with ease.

What isn't so easy is that he needs to somehow get his whole body over the sill. He decides that it needs to be quick, like ripping off a bandaid, so, in one fell swoop, he ushers his whole body to the right, making his way into the house, but landing on the table that the window sits above, and breaking it with his weight.

"Ughh" he groans as he slowly stands up to look at the pitch black room. Luckily his eyes have already adjusted to the night outside, so he could still mostly see.

He shuffles to turn on the overhead lights of the living room, shutting his eyes from the sudden brightness. He looks back at the broken table and groans, realizing he'll have to get a new one. He takes a closer look and sees a broken plate, and still sitting there are two cold eggo waffles.

The sight makes Hopper put his face in his hands and sigh through his nose.

He suddenly remembers why he had to break the table in the first place, and quickly makes his way over to El's room. He realizes that the door's still open, meaning she never bothered to close it, yet another small defeat.

As he walks in he sees El in the same clothes, sitting in the same position. "There's no way you've been doing this all day" he thinks out loud to her, she doesn't respond. He goes over and sits on the bed with her, looking her in the eyes.

"El… you probably didn't even realize, but I had to climb through the window just to get in" he waits for a possible response. After a few seconds, El does acknowledge his existence, "heard", she states simply.

Hopper's shoulders slump, "if you heard me, then why didn't you open the door? I was left out in the cold El…" he lightly scolds, putting an arm on her shoulder. Usually he would be much more upset, but he couldn't will himself to be too mad at her.

"Sorry" she says in a very half-assed manner, Hopper picks up on this and sighs. "I'm guessing you haven't taken a shower?" he guesses, El shakes her head in response.

Hopper grabs her my her waist as she slowly grabs onto his back, "c'mon then" he says with strain as he lightly lifts El off of her bed, her legs slowly sticking out to touch the floor so she can stand, he hears the all familiar cracking that comes with her movement.

Once she stands up and steadies herself, Hopper grabs her hand and leads her to the bathroom.

"Are you gonna need help again?" Hopper asks, El looks down and whispers, "don't want to shower".

He sighs at this and slowly grabs each hand to raise it up, taking off her shirt, she doesn't resist. "I'll take that as a yes" he quips before getting her ready for a shower.

After he finishes cleaning her up and gets new clothes for her again, he sets her back onto the bed, to which she quickly sits her back on the wall again and brings her knees up to her chest. It pains Hopper so much to see how much she wants to just sit there, and take things in.

He gives her one last look before a thought pops into his mind. He goes to the kitchen to grab a cereal bar from the lazy susan, and he walks back into her room and places it on the counter.

_Maybe if she doesn't want to move, then she'll at least eat this_. He doesn't even think it will work, but it's worth a shot. He goes back to the kitchen and begins to prepare himself a real dinner.

…

The next morning, he repairs the blanket for the window and calls in to take another sick day. He's got a lot of errands to run today, so he'll need today. He goes back into El's room to say goodbye, but when he walks in, he immediately notices something peculiar.

There lies El in her normal position, awake for god knows how long, as he's come to expect, but he sees that the cereal bar is no longer there, and what remains is instead an empty wrapper.

He walks over to the counter and grabs it in gleeful awe, he feels tears begin to make their way to his eyes, so he looks up. _He can do this. He can help her… one step at a time_, he reminds himself.

**November 13th, 1984**

Eleven can see nothing but blackness. She feels herself… existing, but cannot perceive it.

She can't feel her body, she tries to move her head from side to side, but she doesn't. When she looks to the left, she can see the left, and when she looks to the right, she can see the right, but she cannot comprehend the motion of her turning her head. She looks down but cannot see herself, only the void.

But in an instant the void turns to a lush field, the brightness of the day making her back away. She looks around her again to see gorgeous wheat fields, stretching in all directions as far as the eye can see. She looks up to see a beautiful rainbow, and she lets go of a massive breath she didn't realize she had.

She looks to her right to see, out of the wheat fields, three sunflowers, and to her left, another four sunflowers. She finally recalls the nagging thought in her brain.

_Breathe. Sunflower. Three to the right. Four to the left. Rainbow._

Upon realizing the visual representations, she turns around to see an old shed with a singular door. It looks to be no bigger than an old outhouse, one where people would go to use the bathroom.

It's old and rusted, with plant life seemingly growing around it and retaking it. On the top of the entrance the words _Hawkins National Laboratory_ are spray painted. She moves over to take a closer look, but is interrupted by a serene voice.

"It used to be bigger" El hears from behind her. She turns around yet again to see the figure of her Mama, Terry Ives.

She wears the outfit she wore when El went to see her, but her hair is now completely loose, left free to dangle from her scalp, reaching to her shoulder blades. Her skin is perfectly clear and smooth, but El's immediate thought is _how can she see me? I can't see myself?_

Terry seemingly reads her mind and nods slowly, "it's okay Jane, we can all see you"

El does a 360 to see if anyone else is there, but she finds no one. Terry continues, "it used to be all there was, but the roots have made it shrink" she gestures to what looks to be the roots of a tree, even though there is nothing but wheat and sunflowers for miles.

"Papa is inside, do you want to see him?" the woman adds.

"No…" El responds, and Terry smiles, "good"

El's mother extends her hand, to which El grabs, even though she sees no hand of her own. "Let us go see the tree" she says as she looks forward, walking the opposite direction to the lab.

They both walk for a long while, seeing nothing but wheat, retracing the roots back to what her mama said would be a "great tree".

Eventually, the pair make their way to the woods… but they look familiar. Mama once again seems to read her mind. "These are the woods in Hawkins… for a long while there was only the lab, but one day, these woods appeared, and so did the great tree that destroyed the lab" she explains.

El remembers when she first escaped from the lab. She remembers the sirens of the lab as the scientists began to pay little attention to her. She took this as her opportunity to run to her room, but she must have been mistaken, for when she ran to the door that she had thought to be her room, she was instead greeted by the woods.

Behind her she saw the walls of the massive lab, but in front of her was a beautiful landscape, it mesmerized her. She thought about going back to her room, but she was too scared to disappoint Papa like she had, so she instead opened the chain link fence with her mind and ran into the woods. The rest was history.

But she doesn't remember any tree that destroyed the lab, it was the dogs that destroyed the lab, wasn't it?

Her thoughts were interrupted as she felt her mother stop dead in her tracks and gasp, El looks to what she was looking at, and sees the all to familiar residue of the Upside Down on a lone tree.

She glances down to see that the giant roots that they are following have become dark and dead. "We must make haste… to see if the great tree is okay" she murmurs as she looks at El. Terry bolts into a run, dragging El behind her, who struggles a bit to keep up. She finds that it isn't that she gets tired, just that she isn't capable of running as fast as her mom.

It doesn't take much longer until the whole forest is dead, with the thick and noticeable pheromones that are prevalent in the Upside Down taking form. She's here… the one place she saw every time she entered the void. The home of the Mind Flayer and the Demogorgons.

After a little bit more walking, El notices the great _fiend_ in the distance. She doesn't know it, but she can feel the presence of something terrible. El and Terry slowly walk towards it, hands still held together.

The closer they get, the bigger the fiend becomes, and the more El can make out it's appearance. It isn't long before they are very close to it, and El focuses her eyes.

It's a dark monster, made of living shadow, with tentacles that stretch as far as the eye can see, and red lightning erupting around it. It looks familiar… but El can't quite pinpoint where she's seen it. Terry speaks up, "who are you, fiendish traveler? And what has happened to our great tree?"

The entity shifts its head to look down at them, and it's voice booms, not out of its mouth, but out of the air that surrounds them, with multiple disgusting voice closing in on El's ear, as if they were all whispering to her, telling her the same thing. "I have slain your mighty tree, proving myself the new lord of the realm"

"Our great tree, fallen? I do not believe it!" Terry shouts back. "Believe it, or don't believe it, the truth is the same" it retorts. Eleven does not know this tree, but she feels an overwhelming sense of dread at the fact that it is dead.

She looks down in despair, as does Terry, but they hear a familiar masculine and gruff voice come behind them.

"That may be so… but as this realms protector I command that you show us our tree. Do this and I will bend the knee, as I did for the tree, and the lab before it" Hopper shouts as he walks up to El and Terry from behind.

He reaches for Terry's arm as their hands intertwine. "Father protector…" she says as they accept each other in a warm embrace.

"Very well, you may see the husk of your fallen ruler" the entity relents as it shoots up into the sky, the wicked red lighting ceasing with it's passing. El finds herself running at full speed towards the tree.

Even though she can't see it in the distance, she somehow knows exactly where it is.

Once she reaches is, she takes in the sight. There lies an enormous tree, seemingly bigger than all of the others combined, and in its epicenter lays her first real home.

Her blanket fort.

Within it she sees her one and only love, Mike Wheeler, sitting within the fort, and merged with the dying tree, with Upside Down residue all over him.

His breaths are short and strained, but El walks up to him and stares deep into his eyes. They're the eyes she's seen countless times before, in her dreams and in the void, the eyes of the boy who cared for her, and comforted her in her darkest time.

"The great tree saved your life with a kiss… perhaps if you do the same, you can save him" Terry suggests from behind. She doesn't need to tell El twice, as she plunges her lips into his, hoping desperately that it will save him. But nothing.

Her mother sighs, "maybe your kiss is not enough" she says, the hope escaping with her breath. "No…" El replies, but it does nothing. "Maybe you can still love and care for him, and he won't truly die" Terry adds, giving El a small bit of hope.

"Nay… it is too late for our great tree, we must let him pass like so many others in the realm, so that you can continue to live" Hopper says, doubting the powers of the great tree. El doesn't want to part with Mike… she wants to stay here and him forever.

"If you do not relent, then you will stay apart of him, forever. You musn't cling, for he is not the same, as his soul has already left, and only the husk now remains" Her father adds on. "Father protector, you lose hope too quickly" Terry argues, but yet another voice comes in.

"No, he doesn't, he only wants what's best for Jane" the old and calming voice of Dr. Owens cuts in. He goes over to kneel with El, who is now hugging onto Mike for dear life. "Jane… this horrible world, the sadness and anguish of our new realm… I have the power to change it"

El's eyes widen, as she desperately wants things to go back to the way they used to. "But… the great tree has to die. His soul must completely leave this realm, which means you must let go of him"

"No!" El shouts back without a second of thought. "Would you rather suffer in agony than save the lives of countless people of the realm?".

El takes more time to consider his question, but she looks back at Mike, she sees his cold dead eyes, and his struggling breaths, and the goop completely covering him. But she doesn't want him to leave, she isn't ready to say goodbye, so she hugs him even tighter.

"Yes…" she states coldly, resting her head on his chest as she sighs.

Owens stands back up. "Very well… you've chosen to doom your family"

"I'm sorry… but I can't leave Mike" she says as she closes her eyes, hearing the red lightning strike next to her, hitting Hopper, Owens, and Terry. She keeps her eyes closed, her whole body shaking as she clutches Mike and buries her face back into his chest.

"Please don't leave me Mike…."

She wakes up in a jolt, her forehead glistening with sweat as she looks around her room and realizes her situation. _It had all been a dream_.

Her first actual dream since it happened. It wasn't real, but a part of her wishes it was, because she would at least get to see Mike again. She sits on her knees and bends down, resting her forehead on her fist, which is rested on the bed.

El lets out a heavy sigh, quickly letting out short bits of her breath at a time, the realization hitting her harder with each passing second. _He's still not here._

"I'm sorry, Mike" she whispers to herself as she jumps back up to her normal position. Her arms reaching around her legs, tucking them up back to her chest. She once again begins to stare at the foot of the bed, as per usual.

She had finally started to get some sleep, thanks to the persuasion of Owens, since he last came, but never before had she dreamed of anything. When she first had a _real_ sleep the day Owens came over, she didn't dream of anything, just blackness, she remembers the blackness of that night vividly for some reason.

The next few nights she didn't remember much, she didn't _think_ there were any dreams, but she couldn't say for certain.

She had thanked herself for not getting any dreams, because they were just a distraction. She didn't want to distract herself, but Owens convinced her to at least eat and sleep, and since then her dad's been really helpful with slowly getting her to do more stuff.

She glances at her clock and sees that it's already 12:00 PM. Hopper had woke her up earlier and said he was going to be home early, but she was too tired to listen that intently. She can't remember why he woke her up to tell her that, but it wasn't very important.

After about 20 minutes of sitting, she decides that she probably is starting to stink, so she gets up and used her deodorant, after that she walks over to the bathroom and lazily brushes her teeth.

Enough to make her breath smell good, but definitely not getting her teeth clean. She slowly walks over to the toilet to pee, but only a few drops come out. This once again reminds her of how thirsty she is, so she gets up without washing her hands or flushing and moves to get herself a glass of water.

After only a few gulps, she decides that she's done drinking, but the Hopper inside of her mind is telling her to finish the whole thing, so she reluctantly does so.

But before she can drink the last of the glass, she hears a loud knock at the door.

This makes her jump and almost drop the water. _Hopper doesn't knock anymore, he just uses the key, and that's not even the secret knock._ She wonders if the bad men are forcing him to open the door, so he's not using the secret knock on purpose.

She decides that that's the only logical explanation, and moves to her room to hopefully hide. But before she's able to shut the door, her curiosity however is spiked when she hears the knock again, this time different.

_Knock, knock, knock knock, knock. Knock, knock_

She furrows her brow, not expecting such a weird knock. It isn't the standard three knocks she had grown used to hearing from different people, but it definitely isn't the secret knock either, so she wills herself to go up to the door, telling herself that if she looks out the window just a little, they won't be able to see.

She moves the curtain ever so slightly to see who may be at the door, and to her surprise she sees Dr. Owens, looking as jolly as ever, tapping his feet to whatever song might be playing in his head as he hums.

Relieved, El moves over to the door and slowly creaks it open, peeking her head out. Owens looks in front of him for a bit, confusion flashing in his face before he looks downwards slightly to see El.

"Nice to see you El, how've you been?" he greets, El shrugs her shoulders in response, but is reminded by her inner Hopper voice to let him inside. "Want to come in?" she suggests in a nervous tone, hoping she said it right.

Owens smiles widely, as if her offer has some deeper meaning, and he laughs "I'd love to come in"

El opens the door further to let him limp into the cabin, and shuts it close when he's all the way through. He looks around for a bit, furrowing his brow after he's scanned the place, looking back to El, who's just standing there with her hands clasped together, waiting for him to talk.

"Where's your dad?" he asks, El shrugs again and responds "he said he'd be back by now".

Owens lets out a small "huh" as he shifts his eyes to meet Eleven's. "Are still okay with talking without Hopper?" he asks. El widens her eyes, shocked once again that he'd bother to make sure she was okay with talking to him, taking a lot of pressure off her shoulders.

She reminisces before responding, thinking about how there's only one other person who would bother to ask if she was okay and giving her a choice. Her stomach churns at the thought, as the only reason Owens is here is because he's trying to convince her that… she inwardly shakes her head of those thoughts.

"Yes" she whispers, Owens smiles and gestures towards El's seat at the dining table, offering it to her. She shuffles over to the seat and sits down, but Owens doesn't take Hopper's seat across from her, instead moving over to the fridge.

"Now I'm not much of a cook, but I make a mean bologna sandwich" he says as he grabs some of the meat from the fridge. "Do want to eat?" he asks, once again giving El a choice that Hopper never would, even if it didn't make a difference whether Hopper forced her to sit down or not.

She shyly nods, "yes… hungry". She silently hopes that Owens will be excited for her improvement, and to her joy, he cracks another wide smile. "Great! So I take it you've made some improvements since last week?" He questions as he begins to make two bologna sandwiches.

"Yes"

"So have you been eating breakfast and dinner too?" he asks, El puts her face down. "Dinner, but I sleep through breakfast mostly". El looks back up at Owens, afraid he'll be disappointed at not eating, what Hopper refers to as, "the most important meal of the day", but to her surprise his smile widens.

"So you've been getting sleep too? That's great, kid" he says. El feels a sudden enthusiasm for her improvements, so she continues, "yes, and have been walking around the house more… and showering" she begins to list off the things she's done, to Owens' amusement.

Once she's done, he brings over two plates, each holding a sandwich and a handful of grapes. He sits them down and goes over to fill up waters.

"That's awesome El, I'm really proud of you" he finishes, El flashes a tiny smirk of pride. Owens sits down in Hopper's chair and begins to dig in, El mimicking his movements and taking a bite out of her own sandwich. Owens chuckles, "so with these improvements, have you been feeling any better?"

El shakes her head in response, "no… still not sad, like you say" Owens gives her a nod of understanding before leaning in, "have you been talking to your dad?"

El shrugs, "talks about his day, like he always does"

"But what about you? Have you been _talking_?"

"No… talks about his day, and tells me he's there for me, and I listen"

"Okay… but other than that, have you tried to distract yourself at all?"

El gives him a look that says, _are you crazy?_ Of course she isn't going to distract herself from Mike, that's not fair to him…

Owens raises his hands up in surrendering manner, "I'm sorry, but I'm telling you El it makes you feel much better". El rests her head of the table, clenching her hands into fists before letting out an annoyed growl, "don't want to feel better! Want to feel-" she stops to think of a word that best describes how she's feeling, remembering how Owens characterized her situation as her feeling empty"

"Want to feel… full" she says as she rests her back on the wall on her right, looking back at Owens. She isn't really sure if her words make a whole lot of sense, but it's the best one she can think of.

Owens gets the message though, he closes his eyes and sighs, feeling an overwhelming sense of pity for the young girl before her. "I know El… I know. It feels like Mike left a hole in your heart, and I'm sorry to say, but that hole's never going to fully close"

El moves her eyes to her lap, not wanting to look him in the eye, because he's _too_ right. "But El, you've still got a lot of your heart left to give, and you shouldn't shut that out too," he explains. El sighs and goes back to eating her sandwich.

Owens himself is a little shocked at this, but he doesn't show it. An outburst like that is atypical in someone who's going through denial, so a part of him expected her to react a little more to his words. He shrugs it off however, _everyone's different_ he thinks as he lets the silence play out for a bit.

El continues to munch on her sandwich, popping the occasional grape in her mouth, content to just sit there in silence. But after a while, Owens breaks it, "El… I want you to keep in touch with your dad, okay? He's suffering too, because he doesn't wanna see you like this" this sends a pang of guilt through El's body, knowing that Hopper has been trying desperately to be there for her since it happened.

She gives him a look, knowing he still has more to say, and he continues "Just, every day, tell him how you're feeling. Even if you feel the exact same as you did the day before, just talk to him. It's just as important as eating and sleeping".

El sighs and nods her head, not really wanting to get into another argument about how she doesn't want to distract herself by talking to her dad. She doesn't say a word, moving once again to eat more of her grapes and drinking water.

"So…" Owens continues with the conversation. "I hear from Hopper that Mike's funeral is coming up in a few days". She narrows her brows and gives him her usual confused look, "funeral?"

"Yeah, funeral" he restates, continuing to eat his sandwich. El shifts her eyes to the left before going back to his face, shaking her head a little. Owens finally gets the message, "you don't know what a funeral is?" he asks, El shakes her head again.

"Well it's a little bit like a party, do you know what that is?" El nods her head at this, her furrowed brows finally returning to their normal position. "But parties are usually happy, because they're celebrating… but a funeral isn't happy. Everyone wears black clothes, because it's a tradition, and they gather around to listen to a few people talk about whoever died, and they grieve"

El sits back, absorbing all of the information that was just thrown at her, looking at the floor to comprehend his words. She looks back, "grieve?"

"Yeah… it's what you're doing right now. It's what you've been doing, and it's what you'll be doing for a long time"

El face turns to a sad frown, "empty… for long time?"

"Not exactly, you see when you grieve, you feel a lot of different emotions, and emptiness is just one of the first ones, but everyone's different". El gives him a hopeful look, "feel different… eventually?" she asks, and Owens nods sympathetically, "one day, if you keep talking to your dad, you're gonna be able to _let go_, and continue your grieving process"

El's eyes widen, remembering the dream she had only a few hours ago. Owens picks up on this, "El, it's not a bad thing to stop feeling empty, and it doesn't mean you'll stop caring about Mike", but she shakes her head at this, making the doctor give her a puzzled look.

"Don't get dreams much anymore, but this morning I had one"

Owens eyebrows shoot up in concern, "what was your dream about?" he inquires. El sighs, trying to remember the details. "Mike was a tree, you were there… and Hopper and Mama" she lets out.

"Mama?" Owens questions, and El realizes that he wouldn't know who she was. The memories flood through her, of how her Mama was brainwashed by the scientists, and now her brain can't make her body do many things besides whisper a few words.

She frowns deeply at Owens, the little trust she had for him momentarily going away, "you took me from my Mama" she whispers. Owens heaves a great sigh, "I know El… it wasn't right what we did" he admits, making El look up at him again.

"I always thought that I was doing my patriotic duty as a scientist, helping the government protect us and our nation. I knew everything about you, Eleven, I knew that we took you from your mother… and the worst part is I could have done something about it" he shakes his head in shame, making El feel a bit of sympathy, but still having anger towards the bad man.

"But I was told that it was 'the lesser of two evils' and that it was for the 'good of the people', and I believed them. But when I saw those dogs attack the station and kill all my friends and Bob, poor fella, I knew that this wasn't the right thing to do" he opens up. "I'm sorry, El, if it wasn't for us, you'd be happy with your mom"

Silence fills the room again, with El only looking at the floor, not knowing how to respond, and only after a few seconds does Owns continue, "but now El, I'm doing everything I can to help you, and I know it's not much but I'm trying to do a little good again" he says sincerely, El nods at this, and continues with her dream.

"Yes… Mama was there, and you told me that I had to let go of Mike to save the land from the… umm t-the… MIND FLAYER!" she yells, remembering the image of the shadowy monster that plagued the realm, she remembers how she had stopped it and closed the gate, and what Mike and the kids had called it. It was the Mind Flayer.

Owens furrows his brows, "the Mind Flayer?"

"Yes! It controlled the dogs, and it infected Will"

"It was the hive mind…" Owens remarks to himself upon realizing what El was talking about. "Yes!" she adds on.

"It was the thing that had conquered the tre-" El's thoughts were interrupted. _Knock, knock knock_. Her eyes shoot open and she looks back at Owens, who wears a smile. "Ah, Hop must be back" he says as he puts pressure on his cane to get up from the seat, slowly making his way to the door. El turns around, "no" she warns him, Owens turns around with a look of confusion, "what do you mean 'no'?"

"Dad's knock…" she explains as she makes the knock that Hopper made before using the key. "Secret knock" she adds. The doctor's eyes narrow in concern, "well who else knows we're here?", El doesn't respond, but walks over to the window to slight the curtain back.

Owens sees her eyes widen, but not in fear, rather in surprise, and without another word, El moves the curtain back and walks over to the door, but Owens stops her, "El! Who is it?"

She rolls her eyes, as if he was stupid for not knowing, "Nancy" she answers, Owens looks down at the ground, trying to remember the name, "Wheeler?" he asks, and El nods her head. The doctor's face turns to one of pity, thinking about what _she_ must be going through right about now.

"Hold up El, let me answer it" he suggests, slowly making his way to the door, trying El's patience while he's at it. He quickly opens the door to see Nancy.

She has bags under her eyes, as did all of the Wheeler family at this time, but this one wears an overabundance of makeup, unlike her mother, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

She wears a light polyester jacket and pink gloves, and a simple pair of denim jeans, holding a box that reads "Jane" in marker.

Her brows instantly furrow, seeing the doctor that she had talked to and used as evidence against him in order to shut down the lab. Seeing him in El's cabin instantly made her nerves shoot up, as the scientist knowing where El lives is that last thing she wants to see. "Doctor Owens?"

Owens nods his head, looking around her to check if anyone had accompanied or followed her, seeing no one, he addressed Nancy, "It's nice to see you again Nancy, and I'm truly sorry about your brother…" he remarks, the girl only nodding in response.

"So what have you come to visit me out here for?" Owens asks, keeping a charade by implying that he lives here alone, Nancy scoffs, with worry in her voice, she retorts, "I know Hopper lives here Owens, now what have you done with El?". Nancy's question turns into more of a demand by the end, and her breathing accelerates, as she looks down at Owens' bad knee, ready to kick it and save El if she had to.

Owens raises his hands in defeat, "If you know about El then… I'm sure this all just one big misunderstanding, you see Hopper invited me to give El some counseling because she hasn't been doing well, so I've been coming here for the past week, helping her"

Nancy's eyebrows raise in skepticism, not believing that a scientist who has every reason to want to hurt El is in fact helping her.

Owens picks up on this though, elaborating, "Hopper saved my life when during the crisis, this is the least I can do. Would you like to come in?" Nancy stepped back, unsure of what she would be getting into, Owens simply laughs, "Nancy, if it makes you feel any better, if this was a trap, I would have lured you in with El".

He then opens the door a little more to see Eleven, sitting in her blue plaid pajamas and a gray shirt with red stripes on the arms. Her hair is the curled mess it always is, and if Nancy didn't know any better she would assume that El just woke up, but she could see more than tiredness on her face.

She looks at Nancy with as a sincere a look she can muster, "it's okay Nancy, Owens isn't a bad man". Nancy sighs, still skeptical of the man she had such a disdain for when her and Jonathan were taken to the lab. "O-okay" she relents before walking into the cabin, Owens shutting the door behind her.

After looking around a bit, she looks right at Owens with another, _I might just kill you_ face. "Where's Hopper?"

"That's a good question"

"I called him and he said he was going to be here at 1:00"

"I did the same, I guess he got held up with something" Owens shrugs before going to the kitchen, "you eat lunch?" he asks, looking back into the fridge to grab some meat. "Yeah, I had a small something before I came up," she says, Owens nods and shuts the fridge.

An awkward silence hangs over them for a little bit as the doctor goes back to sit down. "So… how can we help you?"

Nancy's face falls, as she's reminded of why she came up, and the box that she's holding. "What's… in the box?" El perks up, seeing her name written on it.

Nancy sighs, "we were, umm, cleaning out the basement and Mike's room… and… this, this is just the stuff that I wanted to give to you," she says, the sadness palpable in her voice. El looks at her with her soft hazel eyes, almost to ask _for me?_ Nancy looks down.

The girl turns to Owens, "can… we go to my room?" she asks Owens, he smiles in return, "sure thing kid" he says, finishing his lunch. Nancy gestures her head over to the door, "is that your room?" she asks, El nods her head shyly.

They both walk in, the smell hitting Nancy like a truck, with El seemingly noseblind to it, she hides her scrunched face and turns to El.

"What have you been doing all week?" she says, trying to make some small talk. El shrugs and sits on the bed and goes into her position, and looks at Nancy, the teen furrows her brows in return. "Been sitting… like this, for long time… makes dad sad" she explains. Nancy nods, a wave of pity hitting her, knowing exactly what it feels like to lose Mike.

Nancy goes to sit on the end of the bed, placing the box down between them, El moves up and sits on her knees, peering inside.

"This is just the stuff I was able to sneak away from mom, she kinda wanted to keep everything" Nancy adds, opening the box. El is immediately hit by the familiar smell of the basement, the nostalgic memories filling her mind.

She heaves a large sigh, being reminded of the better days when she could just hide in his house. Nancy moves to grab the first things out of the box, being multiple small blankets and covers that she recognized.

"These were the blankets… that made up your fort when you stayed at our house. My mom made me take it down, but I thought I could at least give you the covers if you wanted to rebuild it, with this" she reaches back down the box to hand her a picture of the blanket for, sitting peacefully in the corner of the basement.

El envies the simpler time, desperately wishing she could go back to it. "Thank you…" she responds quietly, clutching the covers for dear life. She now knows exactly where her new thinking spot is going to be, either that or she's going to be holding these when she thinks in her bed.

Nancy pipes up after a nice bit of silence, "I don't really know you that well, El. When I first heard about you, you were just some kid that Mike was apparently hiding in his basement… but when I saw you together at the school, the way you looked at him, and the way he looked at you, I could just tell you two were in love" she opens up, El listens to her intently, absorbing her words but not really emoting.

"And the way he acted, after we thought you died… El, I really don't want you to get depressed like he did" she continues.

El slowly nods her head, "saw Mike talk to me for 353 days, but he can't hear me like I heard him… and I can't feel him anymore"

"Can't feel him?" she furrows her brows, El nods and elaborates, "When I was stuck here with Hopper, I could always feel him, even when I didn't see him in the dark place… but now I don't".

El's stomach churns at what this empty feeling means, she feels her stomach swell, and gets an urge to throw up, but holds it back. "How are you feeling?" she asks.

Nancy stops and looks down, thinking of her next words. "I don't know… everything?" she guesses, "I'm sad… I'm angry, I'm shocked, sickened, scared… I don't even know what to feel"

El opens her eyes further with each word, surprised to see her feel _all_ those different emotions. "The more I think about it, the worse it gets. I don't know how our family's going to move on".

The girl doesn't respond, not understanding Nancy's emotions, thinking that she's a bad person because she isn't sad yet. This feeling is only made worse when Nancy responds with her own question, "how are _you_ feeling?" she asks, looking El straight in the eye.

She sees El's eyes dart down, seemingly in shame, and pausing to answer the question. "You feel everything… I don't… I don't feel anything. _Empty_" she finishes, looking back to Nancy to see her reaction.

To her shock, she doesn't see Nancy disgusted at her for not caring about Mike, but empathetic. A tear runs down her face as she grabs El and hugs her. "I'm sorry… I know you cared about Mike more than anyone else in your life… and I know he cared about you the most"

El looks at her, almost not believing what she's saying, "it's true… Mike loved you so much El" she says through her tears.

El hugs back, burying her face in the young adults shoulder. Another while of silence, neither releasing from the hug. El enjoyed the presence of her one true love's sister, they could both grieve together at least.

Eventually Nancy broke the silence, a question popping into her mind, "are you going to Mike's funeral?" she asks, El shrugs in response looking at the floor, "want to…". Nancy sighs, "well just about the whole town knows about you,''.

El's face widens in shock, "what?!" she begins to worry, breathing going rapid as looks sporadically around her room. "El, it's okay" she rests a hand on the girls shoulder, "Hopper has a story for you, and no one has questioned anything so far" she reassures, but it does little to calm her down.

"But-but what if the bad men, t-they could take me again" she worries, but Nancy keeps her consoling up, "they still don't know where you live, and he told me that he's working on getting you an official birth certificate, you've got nothing to worry about"

Nancy rubs El's shoulders for a bit, waiting for her to calm down. "So, so I can go… outside?", she finally speaks up, and Nancy nods her head, "yeah, I think so, why else would he be telling everyone about you?".

El looks back up at her, "so I can go to the funeral?" she questions shyly, Nancy shuffles her hands in her pockets, "well, that's another thing I wanted to mention" she slowly takes out a small envelope from her back pocket, handing it to El.

The girl hastily opens it and reads it out word by word. "Dear… Jim and Jane, it would make us very happy if you would come to the mem-or-i-al for our son Michael Wheeler, on November the 15th, in the grave-yard near west 13th street, we hope to see you there" she reads aloud, and looks back up at Nancy with a frown on her face, "mem-or-i-al?"

"It's just another word for funeral" Nancy explains. "You and Hopper are invited to come, if you want" she adds. El looks at the card, her heart touched by Nancy allowing her to come, "thank you" she whispers, before leaning in for another hug.

…

Hopper runs to the cabin at lightning speed, checking his watch for a short second to see it read 5:00, "shit" he mutters under his breath, he knew he would be late after the officers had asked him to help them search the area around the Hawkins Lab, and he didn't have an excuse, so he had no choice.

But, as usual, he lost track of time, completely forgetting that both Owens and Nancy were going to come to his cabin today. He didn't know what to hope for. A part of him didn't want them to just leave, because he'd have to call them and apologize and all that crap, but another part of him was scared that they let themselves in, and that means he wasn't there to protect El.

_I'm about to find out_ he figures, grabbing the key he has in his pocket and quickly opening the door.

He looks around all different directions, but sees no one, the only thing he notices is a box sitting on the counter that reads "Jane" in big bold letters.

He peers in it to see multiple items that he knows don't belong to her, but he shakes his thoughts away and moves to El's door, knocking lightly before coming in. He walks in nonchalantly, shaking away the adrenaline that was still in his system.

He sees El sitting in her usual position, but this time she was clutching blankets, blankets he didn't recognize. Not only that, but a card lay at her feet, so he walks over to her and ruffles her hair.

"How you been doing?" she shrugs, moving her eyes every which way. Hopper can tell she's got something on her mind, but he chalks it up to her being her usual self.

"Owens and Nancy come here alright?" she nods at the question, continuing to not make eye contact with him.

He reaches down to touch the blankets, to which El immediately takes them away, and looks him straight in the eye with a stern face, "they're Mike's" she says, scooting herself away so he can't touch them.

Hopper sighs, realizing that she's acting out of place, even considering the events of the past two weeks. "Hey, El, what's on your mind, huh?" he asks, she reverts to looking around the room again, before her eyes land on the card by her feet, and they stay there.

Hopper looks back at it, "can I see this?" he asks, El fights a bit of hesitation before giving the "okay"

Hopper reaches to grab it and opens it up, reading the contents within. After he finishes, he mutters, "funeral on the 15th… hmm". El looks back at him, her face full of pleading, as he knows what she's about to say. "Can I go? Please?"

Hopper knows the risks, he knows them too damn well.

Mike's death is a life changing event, but in the back of his mind, he still fears for her safety, not being completely ready to take that extra step by introducing her to everyone. No one knows what she looks like, and that may change, especially when the Wheelers see her.

"El… it's not a good idea" he gets up and walks away, not wanting to continue an argument that he knows he'll lose. To his shock however, El gets up and follow him.

"But-but dad! I need to grieve!" she tells him, Hopper gives her a funny look, knowing that El's just throwing the word out there without much thought. "El… what if someone catches you, what if the Wheelers recognize you from when the bad men showed them pictures of you.

"But I had no hair!" she argues, but Hopper isn't having it.

He turns around and walks to the kitchen to prepare some kind of food, ready to tell El to get a shower running, but he hears her yell back, "DAD!" she exclaims at the top of her lungs. He looks back at her in shock, "this. is. not. negotiable." she echoes her own dad's words, he stands there gobsmacked.

"I am going" she commands, challenging Hopper's patience. "Not if I don't drive you" he retorts, looking her back in the eye, challenging her to speak up again. "I'll walk"

"You don't even know where it is"

"West 13th street"

"You don't know what that means!"

"I'll find it!" she shouts, throwing her hands down in frustration. "El, I'm telling you no! End of discussion!" Hopper finishes, "and I'm telling _you_ yes!" she continues.

"I have to see him…"

"He's dead El! You won't be seeing him, you'll be looking at a rock with his name on it for a few hours! Endangering yourself and the people you care about for no reason!" he stops talking, thinking about what he just said, he knows he took it too far.

El's face of anger disappears and is replaced with one of, well, Hopper can't quite tell. There isn't any frustration anymore only… panic.

She runs to her room and shuts it as hard as she can with her powers, using them for the first time in weeks.

She runs to sit on her bed, clutching the covers as hard as she can without ripping them, as she buries her face into the yellow blanket. Her breathing is intense, reaching the same levels of hyperventilation that she felt when it when she first found out.

She wants to cry… she wants to cry so bad, because she knows she's supposed to, but she can't summon the tears. She remembers her dream, how Hopper had lost hope in the trees power, and how he told her to let go of the tree, so it can die in peace.

She lies down, her head near the foot of the bed, and her feet near the pillows. She closes her eyes, still breathing heavily, attempting to feel the blankets between her numb fingers, but to no avail.

**November 14th, 1984**

Hopper wakes up to the sound of birds chirping out his window, like he always does, but this time it feels off, even though he can't quite pinpoint it. It feels like he's not completely there, that his senses are numbed, but he hadn't been drinking or smoking right before bed like he usu-

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of crying. He immediately jumps up, remembering what Owens had said about El accepting Mike's death. He runs out of his room and straight into El's making a slight turn in the living room to make it to the door. But when he opens the door, he doesn't find El.

He doesn't find her blankets, her bed, her cabinet, or her nightstand. It's as if the room was completely cleared, as if no one lived here.

But there is something. There sits a woman, crying with her back turned to him. He moves over to her, the creaking of the floor alerting the woman to his presence, she turns around to face him and he sees who it is.

It was his wife, Diane, sitting there with a tear stained face, sitting in front of a tombstone. She runs over to Hopper, crying as she does, "oh Jim!" she says as she hugs him tightly, burying her face in his chest. She lets him go to walk over to the stone, it reads "here lies Sara Hopper. 1971-1978".

The room goes black, all windows and walls disappearing to show a void. Diane was gone, and only him and the tombstone remained. He takes a moment to look, remembering the way he couldn't continue after Sara, losing himself in his grief. Just like he feared for his new daughter…

With the thought of this came a hideous sight, the grotesque and decomposed hand of Eleven shoots out of the ground in front of the tombstone, along with the rest of her body.

She wears only a hospital gown, with the buzzed hair she had a year ago, and the number _011_ carved into her wrist, which was nothing but bone.

Her face was either rotted flesh or completely skeleton, except for her eyes. Her eyes remain the beautiful hazel they always were, but they're filled with tears.

The tears completely fill her eyes, but they never fall. The putrid being that had become El grabs him by the collar with her bony hand, she looks him in the eyes, the tears finally falling out, before the being grabs a knife from seemingly nowhere and shoves it not into Hopper, but into her own heart, which was never beating to begin with.

He watches as the child lets out an ear piercing scream, the body quickly crumpling to dust, and finally completely going away. Hopper looks back at the tombstone, which has changed to say, "Jane Hopper, 1971-1984".

The broken man finally lets his own tears fall… "no… El, please…" he whispers to himself, looking down at the ground before she hears the giggles of young girls. He looks back up to see the tombstone gone, but two figures he knows to be Sara and El.

They're holding hands, and their decomposed forms are no longer visible, with their skin clear as the day, and their presences full of life. But they turn around from him and walk away, with Hopper finding himself unable to move to catch either of them.

El stops holding Sara's hand a good distance away from Hopper. The younger girl keeps walking into the void, but El stops and looks back at Hopper. She smiles, with tears in her eyes, her smile is of warmth, happiness, contentment, all things that he pains to see his daughter smile for again.

She speaks, her voice as soft as always, "I won't stand here for long, dad" she whispers, yet he can still hear.

Hopper jumps out of his bed with a shout, sweating through his clothes completely as he looks up at his window to see the night sky, the clock reading 3:43. He sighs, realizing that it was all just some messed up dream, letting the tears fall from out of his eyes, he wipes them on his sleeve and gets up, taking in the whole experience.

_I won't stand here for long, dad_

The words echo through his mind, quickly giving him a pounding headache. He looks out his window and stares at the trees in the distance. He thinks about that funeral, how much it would mean to her.

Mike was the first person to ever mean anything to her other than fear, the first person to show her compassion and love. He remembers Sara, and his guilt, his anger, his grief. He went back to Hawkins not six months after her death, drinking and medicating his life away.

Hopper understands how El feels, at least hopes he does, and he knows that _nothing_ is going to stop her from going to something like this.

…

El lies under the four covers that made up Mike's old fort, each blanket having varying degrees of thickness. She had fallen asleep to once again no dream, but still wishing she could stay there, _better than this hell_, she thought to herself.

The blankets still smelled like Mike's basement, but she knew they wouldn't stay that way forever, so she holds them up to her nose, and keeps it there, alternating between blankets every so often.

She had thought about running away at night. After all, Hopper's always a heavy sleeper, so it's not like it would be hard, and that would give her extra time to find west 13th street, or ask someone. But she loves Hopper, and she doesn't want to make him sadder than he already is.

Deep down she knows he just wants to keep her safe, so she doesn't blame him for not letting her go… but that doesn't change the fact that she _is going_. She has to see Mike…

The thought of those words make her want to throw up. Hopper told her that she wouldn't be seeing Mike, just looking at a rock with his name carved in it, and she knew he was right.

She still does, but it doesn't stop it from feeling like a hundred rusty nails poking and stabbing at her soul. She doesn't want to let go of the great tree. And if it means the realm is cast into darkness then so be it.

He sighs into her covers, the emptiness washing over her. She debates in her mind whether she should tell Hopper that she's leaving.

If she does, it would make him mad and he would try to stop her, even though he would fail, but if she doesn't, then he would be scared for her, and worry if she was safe. And it would ruin the chances of her going out again for a long time, which doesn't really bother her right now.

She lays there for a couple more lonely seconds until the door quietly slides open, revealing her dad, with bags under his eyes from what looks to be a lack of sleep.

He wears the same shirt he did yesterday, with more comfortable pants than jeans.

He leans his back on the door frame, not bothering to walk in, and looks at her, tiredness and sadness in his eyes. El slumps up, resting her back on the wall, legs still under the blankets as she looks back at him.

"Were you drinking beer again?" she wonders in a soft voice, Hopper lets out a sigh, moving his hands down his face to stretch his eyes wider. "No… just had a bad dream" he explains, El's eyes look back down in pity.

She knows exactly what those are like, constantly afraid of getting a nightmare about Mike now that he's… gone. Usually, whenever she was scared she would think about Mike, so what would she do now?

There is no more anchor. No more constant in her life that brings her happiness, and because of that she's hollow.

"Nightmare" she whispers as she looks at the ground, Hopper nods, "yeah, a bad one"

"Sorry…" she says, Hopper begins, "El… it's not your fault. It wasn't about you, or about the funeral" he lies, not wanting to worry her more than she already is. "But… I just couldn't get any sleep, because I was thinking about you".

El's eyes perk up, wondering what he could possibly be thinking about. "I know you're gonna end up going whether I like it or not… and I don't want you to be alone" he says in as comforting a voice as the old police chief can muster.

El's face lights up, not necessarily in happiness, but in shock, "You take me?" she asks. Hopper shakes his head with a smile. "No, I don't take you, I _will_ take you, remember it's future tense" he reminds, El sighs in relief, worried for a second that he just faked her out or something.

"Thank you dad" she says, Hopper's smile grows even wider, "You're welcome, kid. Now, let's get you in the shower"

El coils out of her bed, moving over to the bathroom, Hopper begins to follow her but she stops him. "I can do it myself, dad" she remarks, and Hopper breathes a sigh of relief, "awesome, kid" he ruffles her hair and then walks over to make some breakfast.

**November 15th, 1984**

"Ah… no, too tight" El complains as Hopper fumbles around to get the pearl necklace around her neck. "Is not" he remarks, moving the front of the necklace to touch her neck so he could close the endings better.

"Is too" she argues, but as soon as Hopper finishes, it falls and lands on the lower part of her neck, inches away from the base, as is rests on the back of her neck.

"Just had to clip it together" he reveals. El fiddles with the pearls for a short second, deciding that they're in a good spot.

She glances in the mirror to take herself in. She wears a long but not bloated black skirt, that goes down a little bit further than her knees, and a nice black t shirt, with another long sleeved jacket that goes around her arms and back, but leaves the front open, probably so that her two necklaces are visible.

One is a short necklace that is made of pearls, she was given it to her by Mike when the boys decided to dress her up to go to the school a year ago, she had told Mike that she didn't want to wear it because it was uncomfortable, but today she insisted upon wearing it to the funeral to Hopper.

Another necklace droops down to her chest rather than the base of her neck, it has a nice green gem in it that her dad calls an emerald, and it apparently was passed down from generation to generation in the Hopper family.

Hopper had wanted to do something with her curly hair, but El told him that she wanted it the same, so he just made sure there was no grease or dust in her hair.

She did however ask for some makeup to put on her face. Apparently Mike put some on her a year ago and told her she looked pretty, so she badgered him to get some the day before.

"There, all done" he steps back to take in his work, "you don't look half bad, kid" he remarks, El continues to stare into the mirror, taking herself in. "Pretty?" she looks at him through the mirror, "definitely, El" Hopper smiles, and she smiles back, if only to reassure him that she would be okay.

Hopper walks out of the room to look at the grandfather clock, realizing the time. He himself dawns a simple black tux, and a pair of nice navy blue jeans.

He had combed his hair back, but El said she didn't even notice when he asked about it, so he didn't think much of it. He walks back into her room, thumb pointed to the door. "El, we better leave soon, or we're gonna be late" he suggests, El nods her head, and they both leave to get into their car.

…

El pays extra attention to each road they pass, and each turn they make, hoping to memorize the road to the graveyard so she could visit it whenever she wants.

Not only that, but it does a good job of distracting her, as each time she thinks about where they're going, and what it means, her stomach tightens in fear, the ricketing of the police car not helping too much.

She doesn't know what exactly a tombstone is, Hopper had told her that it was a flat rock standing upright, that had the name of whoever died on it. He said that most of the time the people's bodies were buried under the stones, and at this her dad seemed to stop, looking her dead in the eyes with a look of hidden fear.

_Maybe he was scared of the bodies?_ She had thought. But when she asked if Mike's body would be there, he told her that they couldn't find the body, so there was only a rock.

She doesn't think too hard about the fact that Mike isn't going to be there, because when she does she just gets even more scared. Her reminiscence is interrupted by the sound of Hopper's gruff voice.

"Now El, there's going to be a lot of people… and they know I have a daughter but they've never seen you before, so they might come up to you and ask questions. And if they ask questions you don't know, or ones that have to do with your past, just let me do that talking" he explains, El apprehensively nods her head, and Hopper picks up on her nerves. "It's okay El, I'll be right with you the whole time, and Nancy, Joyce, Jonathan, and the boys will be there too" he consoles, keeping his eyes on the road.

El nods again, she sighs, trying to shake the fear from her mind.

It isn't much longer until they arrive. Hopper quickly gets out and moves over to the passenger seat, opening the door for El while she gains her bearings. _Breathe. In and out, in and out_, she tells herself, remembering what Hopper had told her to do in a crisis like this. "You ready?" Hopper asks as he holds out his hand.

She knows that accepting her hand means walking into a world where Mike is gone, but she slowly takes her hand, wanting to feel full again one last time.

They both slowly walk over to the field filled with stones, and she notices a few people dotting the field at different tombstones, but the one they're headed towards is the one with an actual crowd.

It's a quiet windy day, with the crowd talking in hushed whispers, all wearing black just like her and Hopper. A man in the back walks up to them as they approach, holding a clipboard, the contents of which El can't quite see due to his height.

"What are your names?" he says softly, Hopper speaks up, "I'm Jim Hopper, this is my daughter, Jane" he quickly responds. She sees the man flip through the pages of his clipboard before releasing his eyes from a squint, "Ah, here you are, you'll be seated in row 2" he says.

El notices Hopper widen his eyes at this, not exactly knowing what row 2 means. She waits till they leave to ask her dad, "row? Like row a boat?" Hopper chuckles at this a little and explains, "no, you see a row is kind of like a line, but its in a different direction. Say you're waiting in line to do something, then you're behind someone and in front of someone, but in a row there's someone on your right and on your left instead of front and back". El nods her head in understanding, "why row two?" she asks.

"That's a pretty good question, kid, usually the family and important people sit in the first few rows" Hopper answers.

It doesn't take long before they're in the midst of the crowd, Hopper shoots his head up and moves it from side to side, looking for someone, while El clutches Hopper's arm for dear life. All the people she sees here look friendly, but they're also unfamiliar, and they look at El with questioning eyes.

"Hop!" the voice of a woman calls from behind, him and El turn around to see the comforting sight of Joyce Byers, with Will following behind her.

"Hey Joyce" he moves to shake her hand, but she ignores it and goes straight for the hug. "How've you been, Jim?" she looks at him with her mom eyes, making sure that he's doing okay.

"I've been doing fine Joyce, was a little afraid of this because, well, you know" as he says this he gestures to El, who's squinting her eyes at the wind that's blowing in her face. Joyce kneels down to her, "hi El, have you been doing okay?"

El shrugs, not wanting to go in depth about her feelings right now, because all she really wants to do was see Mike. Joyce's face turns into the one she's seen her most in, a mixture of exhaustion, worry, and pity. "You look very pretty, El" she says in her warm voice, El forces a smile, "thank you, you look pretty too".

Joyce wears a simple black sundress with long sleeves, and a nice necklace in the shape of a star. Her hair is bundled up, and she has a noticeable amount of lipstick on. The boy behind him is wearing a tight tuxedo with a bow tie, seemingly lost in deep thought, but visibly uncomfortable.

"Elev- Jane!" Dustin yells from behind her. She turns around to see Dustin and Lucas walking up to her, their mom's in tow. "Hey… Jane" Lucas says as he slowly looks to Hopper, hoping he's keeping to the plan by calling her Jane.

Hopper rolls his eyes, "it's okay kids, Eleanor's just her middle name," he explains, winking at the end so they get the message. The kids nod and look at each other, "hey, guys" Will says as he's finally snapped back into reality, waking up to the other kids and hugging him. Dustin's face turns, "oh, dude, you've never met El before".

Will turns again to look at El, she looks back. Their faces don't emote but their eyes tell a story. A story of understanding, not only for shared trauma but for Mike's death, as they were the closest to him than any of the others. A moment of silence is shared between them, but it's broken by Lucas fake couch, trying to relieve himself of the awkwardness. This alerts Will and he moves to shake her hand, "hi, I'm Will… Mike's told me a lot about you".

"Mike's told me a lot about _you_" El says softly, slowly reaching up and grabbing his hand. Their hands resonate with the same cold, the cold of despair, and the cold of emptiness.

"Chief Hopper, there you are, I'm glad you could come. I would have understood if you hadn't given how your daughter's been taking it" Karen says as she walks over to shake Hopper's hand, "you'd be surprised, Mrs. Wheeler. Ever since the invite she's been dead set on coming, whether I drive her there or not" he laughs, she smiles brightly at him, the tears still fresh in her eyes.

"Joyce, I'm so glad you could come too" Karen turns to look at Joyce, the Byers mom smiles back, "I'm happy to be here, Karen, I am so sorry for your loss, it isn't fair at all" she consoles, Karen nods, closing her eyes to hold back the tears.

"Trust us, we know what it's like more than most" Hopper adds in, referring to Sara and Will, even though Will turned out to be alive. Karen looks down to see a girl staring back at her. Her face looks focused, as if she's trying to find the Mike in her, and from that Karen knows exactly who this girl is.

"You must be Jane…" she says, extending her hand like to the multiple people she's done before, El takes it and shakes.

Karen then kneels down to look at her face to face. Without a shadow of a doubt, El is one of the most beautiful girls she's ever seen.

She wears two gorgeous necklaces and pretty dress, but her favorite thing about this girl is the hair. And the way it curls perfectly like hers used to when she was a kid, even though it was brown instead of blonde.

She realizes just how lucky Mike would have been to be with such a princess, and she immediately wants to accept her as part of the family. Especially because of the knowledge that her son's death has been eating the girl up inside. Karen looks her in the eyes, those _eyes_.

They aren't tear stained like her own, but she can see the grief in them… she can see the love for her son in those eyes. She can't stand the thought of what Mike's life would have been like with her, so she hugs El and cries.

El doesn't know what to think. When she saw Mike's mom for the first time, she looked sad, _really_ sad, and she secretly wished that she could be the same. She could tell it was Mike's mom without her having to ask, she could see the small little features, like the nose, the slight dimple, but most importantly the eyes.

Karen knelt down beside her, and took a second, seemingly taking her all in, and a part of El desperately hoped she liked her. But to her shock, she begins to cry again and hugs her, and she doesn't know what to think.

For a second she doesn't respond at all, but she realizes that this is _Mike's_ mama. She's the one who cared for him, who clothed him, who put food in his belly, all things that he would learn, all things that he would do for El when she first found him. El hugs back, gripping her like she was her own mom. "I'm sorry…" she whispers, "I'm sorry too" Karen responds.

She finally peels back after a while, holding El by the shoulders, "you look gorgeous, Jane" she adds on, smiling at her, El smiles back "thank you".

Karen sighs, dropping her shoulders and getting back up off her knees.

"The service is about to begin, so I better get going," she explains, walking off to the front of the tombstone with Ted, who's talking to some older man in a tuxedo.

After a little bit of catching up, everyone begins to find there seats. Joyce still engaged in conversation with Hopper. "Must've been quite a few tears over the past couple of weeks" Joyce quips, looking up to Hopper, whose face turns stone cold, not exactly what she was expecting.

"Not a single one…"

Joyce furrows her brows, and Hopper closes his eyes, not planning on crying during the funeral, only being there for El. She places a hand on his arm, "I'm so sorry" she whispers, Hopper shakes his head.

"Doctor says she's in denial, apparently it's gonna hit her like a truck, when she fully realizes". Joyce leans her head on his shoulder, "we'll be there for her," she remarks. "Always" he responds, as the funeral begins.

El notices the same man in the tuxedo that was talking to Karen and Ted walk up, he sighs, gathering his papers and placing them on a wooden stand.

She finally gets a good look at the tombstone, which is ordained with flowers, and multiple pictures of him. She realizes just now that this is the first time seeing Mike's face since it happened.

The fuzzy hair that always stuck every which way, the slight hunch, the freckles dotted like stars on his face, and his eyes, the eyes that always seemed to understand, to care. To see him again… she feels terrified.

The cold despair of knowing that his presence had left the world, it's harsh on her soul. The feeling quickly overwhelms her, as she buries her face into Hopper's arm, wanting to shield herself from this hideous existence.

The man begins to talk, but she doesn't listen, she only trembles in the arms of Hopper, unsure as to how he's reacting, but hoping he just lets her stay there. She can hear crying in the distance, probably from a lot of people, and she wishes she could watch and cry to, but she doesn't want to cry.

To cry would be to accept that he's gone, to let go of the great tree, and she can't do that. She can't watch either, because to watch would be to gaze upon a truth that shouldn't be real… she can't.

It isn't long before the speech is finished, in which she hears even more crying. She peeks up from her position to see Nancy and Holly, standing in front of the tombstone, both holding roses. Holly looks too young to understand anything that's going on, but Nancy holds her hand, and whispers something in her ear. Holly then puts the rose down in front of the tombstone, and Nancy waits a short second, her sobbing becoming too much to bare, as she lets her own rose fall.

After some people she doesn't know also begin to kneel down and place their own roses, she sees Lucas walk over, his putting his own rose down onto the stone, followed by Dustin, and then Will, after this she feels Hopper shake her shoulder, the one she isn't currently holding.

She looks up to see Mrs. Wheeler holding a dozen roses, realizing that she must have been handing them out to close friends and family, and she initially reaches her arm to take it, but stops. She would have to walk up and leave it for Mike…

She finds that she can't touch the rose, becoming frozen with fear. She knows that if she grabs it, then she'll have to let it go, she'll have to give it to Mike, and she can't.

She reels her arm back and looks down, shaking her head. She's afraid of what Karen will think of her, but she simply isn't capable of doing it. She sees Hopper lightly push the box down, shaking his head.

And to El's surprise, Karen nods in understanding, putting a finger on El's chin, and slowly raising it. She nods at El, eyes teared over. El stares back at her with her shy brown eyes, and moves back over to Hopper to bury her face again.

She hopes Karen isn't upset with her… not that it makes a massive difference, because Mike is all she can think about.

…

The orange sky soon makes its presence known, as the service ends and all manner of people get up for the after party. There were many emotions felt by the end of the service when it came to leaving.

Some got excited to leave, like Holly, who was too young to see this as any other occasion than one where she had to wear uncomfortable clothes for no reason and put a flower on a rock. Some were exhausted, like Hopper, who never had an especially close relationship to Mike, but felt nothing but empathy for the people who had to suffer. But some didn't want to leave at all, like El.

As the black suit and dress clad crowd make their way over to a nearby building, presumably where the after party is, El finally peels her eyes from Hopper's arm to see all of this, but when she looks back at the tombstone, she sees that no one is near it.

The Wheelers are all hugging together in a tight circle far off in the distance, and the rest are already mostly gone. A few people still remain, making conversation with each other as they prepare to leave, but it isn't long before El and Hopper are the only ones standing there.

"C'mon El, I told Joyce we'd be going to the after party with them, do you know what that is?"

Silence.

"It's just place where people go after a funeral to talk and eat some good food, there won't be as much crying…"

Silence.

"El? Are you coming?"

Silence. A long silence. She doesn't hear Hopper say a word, but she can feel his presence behind her. She hears him sigh, "do you want to be alone with Mike?". El doesn't want to speak… So instead she walks over to the grave, with each step feeling like a choice, a choice to talk to Mike again, so when she makes her way over, she kneels down, looking straight at the tombstone that reads

_In Memoriam_

_Michael Theodore Wheeler _

_1971-1984_

El feels her knees crumble, supporting her torso with her arms, feeling the sun touch her right cheek and ear, and shining upon the stone like a beacon. She hears Hopper walk away in the distance, and when she looks back, he's standing at the end of the rows of seats, resting a hand on one of the chairs and looking off into the distance.

She turns right back around to look at the tombstone.

"H-hi Mike…"

"It's been… long time since I talked to you"

All she hears is the wind hit the trees and the grass, with the occasional bird chirping in the distance.

"I wish I could have talked to you more, because I know we both had things we wanted to say…"

"I don't think I looked the same when we finally got to see each other, I was wearing makeup and hair gel"

"M-my normal h-hair is actually curly, which means it bends a lot on its own"

"You would have said it looked really pretty…"

"I've got a lot smarter since I last _really_ saw you too"

"I know what a lot of words mean… l-like compromise, tragedy, hysterical, a-and… kiss"

"I know what you did at the cafeteria last year, I know you kissed me. And I would have kissed you back if I knew what it was"

She realizes that the cafeteria was the last real conversation that they had, and she bows her head.

"I really wish I could kiss you, and be your g-girlfriend. I saw that on tv, and I hoped that's what we were going to be, once I saw you again"

"I promised a lot of things to you… I promised that you wouldn't lose me…"

El's breathing starts to get heavy, it dawning on her the times she promised things that'll never happen.

"I p-promised that I would go to the snowball with you…"

"Mike I'm so sorry… I really wanted to keep my promises. I-I don't know where you went, b-but I hope it was somewhere nice, like the blanket fort"

"I loved you, Mike… and I really hope you're happy, even without your mama or dad or your friends"

"I promise, I promise that I'll never forget you"

"I still love you Mike…"

El ends it there. Letting the silence wash over her as she leaves her conversation with Mike. She realizes that her head is laying on the tombstone, but it doesn't take her much longer to feel the epitomic dread, the one she felt when she first heard that Mike was gone.

Her blood goes cold again, realizing that this is just a rock with a name on it, and that Mike isn't here, nor will he ever be. She jumps up, running out of the graveyard and into a nearby forest, "hey!" she hears from afar, the voice of Hopper, but she ignores it.

Once she's a fair distance into the woods, the sun slowly but surely leaving the sky, she vomits. And then she vomits again, and then again. "Aaaahhh!" she screams, letting the dead leaves around her float in the air and then get torn apart with her powers, tiny piece by tiny piece until it looks like the leaves are disintegrating rather than being torn.

Luckily for Hopper, who was afraid he had lost her in the woods, was alerted by a scream of pain, and then a mysterious wave hitting him and sending him flying back into a nearby tree.

He knows it was El, so he runs as quick as he can over to her, fearing for the worst. What he sees however is his daughter on her knees, tiny pieces of leaf scattered all around her with three patches of vomit sitting right next to each other. _She was having a panic attack_.

Her whole body felt numb again, and she was breathing faster than she ever had before. El was terrified she would hyperventilate again.

But maybe if she hyperventilated again, she would wake up next to the portal again, the dogs falling like rain from the walls of the cave, as Hopper consoled her. And when she got back home, Mike would be there, and they would kiss and be boyfriend and girlfriend and be happy together forever. But the Hopper inside her head knows what to do,

_Breathe, breathe, breathe. In, and out, in, and out, in, and out._

Her breathing begins to slow down, and she begins to steady herself, closing her eyes and letting the blood flow through her once again as she calms down, but that nagging voice inside her head keeps talking, so she turns around to see Hopper slowly approaching her, his hands held out in attempts to not worry her, as he repeats "in, and out".

The sight is nostalgic, reminding her of the first time she saw him doing this in the woods.

She had just found a batch of Eggo waffles in a box out in the middle of nowhere. _Must be my lucky day_ she thought to herself, before she turned around and saw the police man that had been with her at the school a few months ago. She immediately thought that he had trapped him, but she remembered that he was with Mike, and Mike was a friend.

That was a better time. Sure, she was starving, aching, thirsty, gross, scared, and an all around mess, but at least she didn't feel the way she's feeling right now.

…

"Hey Karen, sorry we're so late, but we need to go home" El hears her dad explain to Karen. "Oh… I'm so sorry, is everything okay?" she wonders, her typical mom voice shining through.

"After you all left, she had a moment with herself and the grave, and she had a bit of a panic attack" Hopper explains.

Karen's hands move over her mouth and she gasps, "oh my goodness, is she going to be okay?" she worries, Hopper nods his head, "yeah, I hope so, but we're gonna just head on home if that's okay with you"

"Of course, just drive safe, okay? And thank you so much for coming down for us today" Karen responds, Hopper says his thanks and greets Joyce goodbye as well, but it all happens in a bit of a blur for El.

The drive home is similar. Because it's mid-november, the night sky was in full effect by the time they got into the car, and El's mind was completely occupied with her new emotions after having a panic attack to pay any attention to the road ahead of her.

A new feeling had seemed to replace her when she regained her bearings in the woods, and she couldn't understand what it was. It wasn't something she experienced before, not when she heard about Mike's passing, not when she kept herself in the same position for days, not even when she talked to him by the tombstone.

Her heart and mind are racing at record speeds in attempts to figure out what she's feeling. And seemingly in an instant, the two stop by the familiar sight of the cabin.

El and Hopper get out, keeping silent on the way, and with a flick of her head, the door opens, much to Hopper's shock that she hadn't done that for over two weeks now. When both walk in, a collective and heavy sigh is released from both parties, glad to finally be home, if for no other reason than to rest.

El saunters over to the box that reads "Jane" in big bold letters.

As Hopper moves along to the kitchen and looks in the fridge. She realizes that she never completely looked inside the box to see everything, but as she dug through the box, the feeling she was keeping inside for the car ride was becoming more intense.

She looked through the stuffed animals, the Millenium Falcon toy he had, and eventually gets to the bottom of the box. But what she sees in there makes her freeze.

It's Mike's supercom… the one she had used to find Will, the one he had used to call her for three hundred and fifty three days.

She grabs it out and holds it for a second, the feeling in her heart becoming palpable as she flicked it over to channel eleven, the channel he used to call her.

The static of the station… it was a sound unlike any other, and a sound she recognized all too well. She stands there for a long while, listening in to the white noise as the memories flash back inside her mind.

She remembers running wildly in whatever direction she felt like in the rain. It made her terrified, because the only time she had water on her was when she was drinking, crying, or taking one of those painful hydro showers.

The rain wasn't painful, but she had never experienced it before, as if the entire world was having a shower, and it felt so cold on her head, the tiny hairs unable to keep her warm. And that's when she saw Mike and his friends, their flashlights shining in her face as they stood there in shock.

Mike had stepped up and offered her his jacket without thinking, "Who are you? Are you okay? Where are your mom and dad?" he bombarded her with questions, but she didn't really understand him at the time, because of the noise of the rain and the speed at which he was throwing the questions.

Her mind is thrown back into reality however, as she truly realizes what exactly it was that she was feeling in the car.

It was sadness… a raw, utter, absolute, and extraordinary sadness.

_Splat…_

At this realization, she feels the cold drop of a tear fall onto her hand. And then another, and then another, and it just keeps coming. She begins to shake, being hit by a wave of despair and misery unlike anything she had felt before.

Mike was dead… the boy that took her in when she was most scared and trusted her even though she was a freak, a freak with no hair and no smarts, the boy that still cared about her. The boy that El fell in love with.

Mike is dead… and he isn't going to come back to her. Not now, not ever.

"Dad…" she turns to her dad who's still roaming the fridge in the kitchen, he can hear the sadness in her voice and lifts his head. His jaw visibly dropping and his eyes widening, tears immediately forming in his eyes.

It all hit her… everything that she had held inside her for the past two weeks finally became too much, her emotions pouring out of her uncontrollably. She falls to her knees, the supercom sliding out of her grip.

Hopper rushes over to his sobbing daughter, holding him in a hug with all his might. "It's okay El" he consoles, stroking the back of her head.

El begins to break down piece by piece, her sobs being the only thing that makes a sound out of her. She clutches to her dad like he was her lifeline, staining his shirt with tears, tears that wouldn't stop coming if she tried.

"Nooo… p-pllease no-o-o" she says, interrupted by her own hyperactive breathing. To Hopper's surprise, the longer they sit there, the worse it gets, El starting to scream in emotional pain, muffled by her dad's shirt.

At this point Hopper's crying too, seeing the unequivocal pain his daughter's in. When she sat in her bed, doing nothing at all, he could hardly understand what she was thinking or feeling, but with this it all makes sense.

Every second that passes is another reminder that she'll never see her world again. Never get to smell him, to touch him, to kiss him, to hear him, to talk to him, to feel his presence… not ever again. It isn't a feeling that she's ever felt before, but this is no time to feel anything other than sadness, so she continues to wail into Hopper's chest.

She has to let go of the great tree, she knows she has to, but at least wants to say goodbye to him one last time.

"Mike… Don't leave me" she begs to herself, Hopper being unable to do anything besides cry with his daughter on the floor, for as long as she needs.

"Mike."

**Damn. That really did make me cry just to write that. I really hope you enjoyed reading this, even if you weren't technically happy lol. The dream sequences might have been a little confusing, but I hope I didn't make anything too hard to understand.**

**Basically it's just symbolism. "The Realm" is obviously El's psyche, and Terry says that it all used to be the lab, until the great tree shrunk it down so that now only Papa lives inside. Obviously the great tree is Mike, and symbolically speaking Mike was the one who saved her from her trauma of the lab, and introduced her to positive emotions like happiness and love. But the great tree was defeated by the shadow monster, which is symbolic of the Mind Flayer killing off Mike with his dog minions. Also Hopper is the father protector because his number one priority is keeping El safe, whether she likes it or not. The reason I had Hopper and Terry hold hands is because El sees Terry as her mother and Hopper as her father, and subconsciously wants to have a loving father and mother that are together, just like everyone else. Owens appears, saying that he can save El from this horrible realm, and in truth he can help her move on, but in order to do that she has to let go of the tree that she's clinging to, in other words move on from Mike's death.**

**I would go into Hopper's dream a little bit more but that's mostly for you guys just to enjoy and doesn't have as much symbolism, it just shows Hopper's fears that he has for El and in general. **

**Anyways, I hope the pacing wasn't **_**too**_ **bad, and if I'm lucky I was able to make you cry at least once, because there are a few heavy scenes. Thank you all for your reviews as well, and yes, I will be continuing this series, doing at least four more and maybe five. A pleasant night to you all -Y**


	3. Chapter 3

**Many Greetings! I want to apologize for taking nearly two weeks to get this out to you guys, unfortunately college doesn't allow for as much free time as you would think. I'm also afraid that this will result in me not being able to post chapters as long as they were before, but there's not much I can do. There were also many questions you guys had that I wanted to answer, the chief of which being Steve's role in this story. **

**In fact a lot of you guys are kind of wondering about Steve, and why I decided to kill him off too. The way I see it, there are two reasons, one is an in-universe reason and the other is more of a narrative reason. The in-universe reason is that I doubt Steve would be anything other than the last person to climb out of the hole, we saw this when Steve and Dustin were the last ones in the cave in the real season two. He's the adult so my logic was that if Mike was trapped in the hole then there isn't a good reason to have Steve be on the other side. **

**The narrative reason is that Steve is probably one of the characters that has the absolute least to do with Eleven. To him, she's the strange girlfriend of his ex-lover's brother. And it's not to say that Steve didn't have any potential, because he definitely did, but I feel like I wouldn't end up using him to the fullest potential if I kept him alive, because above all else, this is a story about Eleven. She's the main character, and then characters like Nancy, Owens, Hopper, and Will are all important side characters. I obviously could have found a reason to keep Steve alive, but to explore Steve's psyche and really go in depth with the character would have shifted focus away from El, which isn't exactly my end goal. **

**And if I decide to keep him alive but not explore his character, then it feels like I'm doing him a disservice because there really is a lot of potential. So yeah I just thought I would explain my reasoning behind Steve's death and why I plan to keep him dead, I hope this isn't some sort of deal breaker for you guys, but I think I should stick to my artistic vision with this really being a story about El. Thank you all for the reviews and I hope you enjoy! -Y**

Chapter 3: Fallout

**November 19th, 1984**

_Knock, knock, knock knock, knock. Knock, knock_

Owens stands outside of the cabin door on the frigid November morning, thanking himself internally that he brought a heavy coat this time around. _Sometimes those weathermen are right_, he thinks to himself.

He had called Hopper just a few days ago to tell him that he would have to come in on monday instead of his normal tuesdays, because he had gotten a job as a general practitioner in the Hawkins Memorial Hospital. He figures it wouldn't hurt to give a little back to the world after the mistakes he's made.

After a good minute of standing in the cold, his body begins to have enough, so he knocks again, with a little bit more force. It's odd how Hopper's been acting recently. He knows that he's been taking all of his vacation and sick days to be with his daughter since the funeral, but when he was on the phone with the police chief, he didn't elaborate on his exhausted voice.

A part of Owens knows that this visit is probably just as important to Hopper as it is to El, so he makes a mental note to keep in check with Hopper while he's here. The doctor finally hears the TV that had been playing rather loudly turn off, which means that someone was awake.

Not a few seconds afterwards, Hopper swings open the door. Owens stumbles a little bit, not only at the speed of the door swinging but the general appearance of Hopper. His eyes are bloodshot and his face slumped, his beard is starting to grow uncontrollably, showing that he probably hasn't used a shaver in quite a long time.

"Don't tell me El's the one giving _you_ showers, chief" the doctor jokes, noticing the similarity between Hopper and how El looked when Owens first talked to her. Hopper doesn't emote, but Owens still laughs at his own joke. Hopper begins to nod, "it's good to see you, doc". Owens finally remarks on Hopper's demeanor, "is everything okay?"

"You tell me." Hopper beckons Owens inside, but stops him before he fully gets into the house. He holds a finger up to his mouth, beckoning him to be quiet. Owens nods, wanting to be free from the cold as soon as possible.

Hopper slowly shuts the door behind him, and beckons to the kitchen, Owens nods again, but not before noticing the small girl wrapped up in warm blankets, sitting asleep by the fire. It's difficult to make out El's face, the orange glow of the fire being the only source of light in the house. So he sneaks over to the kitchen where he meets Hopper.

"How's she been doing?" Owens asks, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. Hopper heaves a sigh before continuing. "After the funeral, she finally broke down, and she's been bawling her eyes out ever since" Hopper whispers, the memories flooding back…

**November 15th, 1984**

Hopper opens the fridge to hopefully find some decent food to eat. The drive home was dead silent, with Hopper not even being able to hear her breathe. He stole glances at her every once in a while, and every time he just saw her looking out the window of the passenger's seat, head rested on her arm.

He thinks about what she must be going through right now, as he doesn't really understand. He hoped beyond hope that she would shed a tear during the funeral, just so she wouldn't be bottling it all up during it, but at the same time he was glad that she didn't because it would have drawn unnecessary attention. _Just be there for her,_ he reminds himself.

He sees an old carton of eggs, some lunch meat, cheese, milk, and some water bottles, nothing too special. He knows that there are at least a few more TV dinners in the freezer, so he begins to open that. He can hear the static of some sort of machine play in the background, probably some other toy that Nancy had brought for her.

He opens the freezer and eyes his choices intently. El doesn't like peas, he knows that for a fact, but it's just about all they've got. He reaches to grab one of the boxes, but before his hands can touch it, he hears a familiar voice.

"Dad…"

_What the hell was that?_ Hopper thinks to himself, it sounded like she was in pain or something, so he instantly shoots his head up to look at his daughter.

He sees her looking back at him, with something he never expected, tears, one by one, streaming down her face. She's visibly shaking, looking like she's close to collapse, and starting to cry intensely, Hopper's eyes widen.

_Holy shit… this is actually happening_, Hopper knows exactly what he's looking at. It must have finally hit her, the fact that Mike was truly dead, and for a moment he completely freezes, forgetting everything that Owens had talked to him about.

He's afraid for his daughter, not wanting to hurt her or scare her away. But he remembers that he needs to be there for his daughter, because she won't be standing there for very long.

And just like that, she falls to her knees, letting the supercom fall to the ground, and Hopper rushes over to her as fast as he can. It doesn't take her even a second to realize that he's right by her, kneeling down in front of her, before she hugs him as tightly as possible.

Hopper is taken aback slightly, but he reciprocates with just as much force, the father and daughter grabbing onto each other for dear life.

After a little bit, Hopper's dread only strengthens when the crying gets nothing but worse. A part of him is worried that she's gonna cry herself to death, considering she's now started to scream in pure anguish as she sobs. It isn't like a high pitched squeal of fright, but it's more like a sound that came straight from her heart, as if she's being slowly tortured to death.

Hopper can't do anything but listen and hug, as he's completely at a loss for words. Every time he thinks she's about to calm down a little bit, it's like her whole thought process completely resets and it becomes more intense again.

After what must have been a few hours, El finally goes to sleep. Her body still writhing and spasming every few seconds from her crying. To Hopper at least, she still looks to be in pain, a permanent frown on her face is displayed, but he slowly lifts her up and carries her to her room, where he throws Mike's covers over her, and heads off to finish his meal.

Not two hours later, after Hopper's finished with his meal and watching tv, he hears crying coming from his daughters room. _Oh my god_, is all he can think as the adrenaline comes back and he runs straight into her room.

He sees her crying into Mike's blankets, not as intensely as she was just a few hours ago, but still above your average sob. She looks back up at Hopper and weakly extends her arms, Hopper takes the hint and runs over to hug her. She once again begins to cry into his shoulder.

After another 20 or so minutes, she finally calms down, and Hopper convinces her to take a shower. "Are you sure you're gonna be okay in there?" he asks.

Before the funeral, Hopper helped El take showers because he knew she wouldn't do it otherwise, but now he's just worried she'll get into another crying fit while he's not there to comfort her.

"Y-yes…" she says, still stuttering from her near hyperventilation. Hopper paces around the room, putting his ear to the door every so often while she takes a shower, making sure she isn't crying alone.

After only around five minutes, El steps out of the shower, pajama clad and ready for bed. She wears a baggy pair of pajama pants, a white tank top and a red flannel overshirt.

Hopper eventually convinces her to try to get some sleep, and that he'll be outside watching tv if she needs him. And after some time, he peers into her room and sees her asleep.

…

Hopper can't find it within him to fall asleep, considering how his daughter is acting right now, and so he shifts every so often in his bed, not daring to check the clock, even though he knows it must be at least 1:00 AM.

He lays there and gazes out the window, letting himself take in every sound of the night, and notices the occasional deer jump through the trees near the cabin. And at this he finds himself able to find some peace, slowly letting his eyes close on their own.

But as soon as he feels himself slip out of reality, he hears a loud _BANG_

He jumps up, adrenaline boosting him yet again as he looks around sporadically to find the noise. He sees nothing, but hears hurried footsteps coming from outside his room. Not a moment later he sees El swing the door open and run to Hopper, trembling in his arms as they both lay on his bed.

"Hey… kid what happened?" he says in his tired voice. El trembles again, pulling herself closer to her dad, if that was even possible. "Nightmare…" she explains, Hopper's eyes widen, knowing full well how bad her nightmares could get.

When Hopper first took her into his cabin, she got nightmares almost every night. She would always explain to him with her limited vocabulary that it was usually about the Upside Down, the Lab, or Mike. It was always about Mike getting taken away, or worse, getting killed by Papa or the Demogorgon.

But now that dream was a reality…

**November 19th, 1984**

Hopper's slowly thrust back into reality, shifting his focus back to Owens as he begins to speak. "How'd it go over for her?" he asks, a slight concern in his voice.

In truth he isn't completely sure how she was going to take it. Owens has a general idea of how most people react after they move on from denial, but El's denial was so bad that a part of him was scared for her, because it was going to be crushing for her.

Hopper puts his hands through his thinning hair, trying to jolt himself from his exhaustion. "It was pretty awful doc…" he says honestly, remembering the fear he had felt for her when she cried, he elaborates further. "She was crying for hours, sometimes she would just scream" he explains, closing his eyes to keep himself from tears.

"I'm so sorry, Hopper, it must have been hard on you. Have you been getting any sleep?" Owens questions. Hopper opens his eyes, with each blink stinging due to his eyes being open all the time.

"That night… she said she had a nightmare, so she came to sleep in my bed, and she hasn't even been in her room since, insisting that I be with her at all times" he lets out, letting the memories come in with his words.

Hopper wants to tell him everything, all the crap he's gone through the past couple of days, just to get it off his chest. It was crying… all day everyday. When she got up, they ate breakfast and she would cry, they watched tv and she would cry, he would talk about having to go to work and she would cry, he would take a sick day and spend time with her and she would cry, and so on and so forth.

But he doesn't want to keep talking to him, he just wants to take a nap, "why don't you take care of this one, doc, I'm not feeling it right now" he suggests, Owens nods profusely.

"Yeah, just let me handle it for a few hours and you get some sleep, okay Hop?" he responds, Hopper nods back and saunters over to his room, looking back to him, "Ellll, wake up…" he attempts to use a soothing voice, but it just doesn't work for the police chief.

El slowly but surely starts to move her head, and immediately notices that her dad isn't right by her side, she widens her eyes and jumps straight up, seeing her dad by the door to his room. "Dad…?" she asks in a puppy dog voice, almost whimpering for him to come back, Hopper rests his head on the door frame in silent frustration.

Owens thankfully notices and chimes in, "your dad's gonna get some sleep for a little bit, and you and I are gonna have some lunch, that sound okay with you?"

El looks at Owens, her face telling him that she wants Hopper to stay here with them, "El, your dad _needs_ sleep okay? It's just for a few hours, so he can get better and take care of you more, and you don't need to worry because I'll be here the whole time" Owens consoles, taking a second to think about his last words, "I know I'm no match for that lovable teddy bear" he jokes, pointing to Hopper, who still has his head resting on the wall, "but I'll do my best" he finishes.

It's too dark in the house to see much of El's expression, but she looks back and forth at Owens and Hopper, eventually bobbing her head down, "o-okay" she whispers, Hopper breathes a large and emphatic sigh, "thank you, El" he says as he walks through the door and shuts it.

El breathes a whimpering sigh, this being the first time that she's been without her dad in a long time. A long silence fills the room, until Owens claps his hands, startling her, "alrighty!" he says with a smile, "let's get to work" he comments, opening each and every blind, until the sunlight has completely filled the room, making El shield her eyes.

Owens is finally able to take a good look at the girl before him, she wears a simple tank top with no overshirt, using Mike's comfiest blanket as a substitute, and thick flannel pajama pants. Her eyes are red and puffy, no doubt using most of her water intake for tears.

"Are you hungry, El?" Owens asks, she shakes her head, and to her surprise he just nods and walks over to the cabinet, grabbing two glasses of water and filling them up. Once finished, he walks over to Hopper's chair at the table and gestures over her seat, inviting her to sit.

"So…" Owens says, lifting the glass of water to his mouth, "your dad tells me you haven't been doing super well lately"

El sits down and nods, looking at the ground, "feel sad…" she says, biting back more tears. Owens gives her a warm smile, "El, remember, it's okay to feel sad".

"Didn't think it would be like this" she says as the tears start to flow yet again. She puts her head on the table and sobs. "It's okay, El, it's natural to want to cry…" Owens wants to say more, but there isn't much else to say. He recognizes people going through grief, and the crying is just an effect of it, so there isn't much else he can do besides be there for them.

"Mike's gone… and h-he's not coming back" she whines through the tears, "he w-was so nice to me, he called me pretty, and gave me clothes and a home"

"I know El… it's such an awful thing to happen, and I'm so sorry"

**December 1st, 1984**

Nancy shuffles in her warm fleece jacket, pushing her hands tighter into her pockets to protect herself from the warmth. She takes a few steps forward from her position, getting herself closer to Mike's grave.

"Heya Mike…" she begins, her voice sincere and full of regret, as if she's talking to someone that she didn't start off great with. "Happy one month anniversary" she says sarcastically, sighing to herself after a bout of silence. It wasn't as windy as the day of the funeral, and now it's a little more dead, with winter finally beginning to creep its ugly face. "You haven't heard from us much… none of you have" she says, looking to her left to see a neighboring tombstone that reads

_In Memoriam_

_Robert Angston Newby_

_1945-1984_

And she looks to her right,

_In Memoriam_

_Steven Joseph Harrington_

_1966-1984_

"That's probably because we don't like to see you guys like this" she remarks, putting her attention back onto Mike. "Mom and Dad aren't doing so great… there are arguments almost every night, it doesn't even matter what it's about because its almost never about you"

"I keep Holly company those nights… sometimes she wonders where you went" she looks down, fighting the tears that begin to form in her eyes, "She's started kindergarten, the teacher's really nice to her, knowing what happened. Dustin tells me that Mr. Clarke has insisted on having her in his classroom when she comes to Middle School" she laughs at the last part, remembering how much her brother had worshipped that guy like a god.

"Dustin and Lucas are doing fine, I think. I haven't heard much from them, and it kinda sucks to, because they were all pretty fun to watch" she jokes, remembering how she once dressed up for some campaign of there's three years ago. "But yeah, they're themselves for the most part, though most of what I hear is from Jonathan, so take that with a grain of salt if you want"

"Will isn't doing great though, he's been having more of a difficult time than the others… I think you meant a lot more to him than you think. Jonathan says he's just lying in his room and drawing a lot of the time. He showed me the ones Will let him see, and they're really good, and really weird".

She knows how abstract Will's art had been he was infected with the Mind Flayer, but with Mike gone it was seemingly up to a whole new level.

She goes over all of Mike's friends in her head, remembering how he wasn't overly fond of Max, so neglecting to bring her up. She lets a tear fall as she thinks about Mike's final friend. Her bottom lip begins to pucker and tremble as she struggles to talk, more tears streaming down her face.

"El's got it rougher though… when you first died all she did was hide in her room, until the funeral. After that she was a mess, I came to visit her a few more times, and every time she would cry into my arm when you were brought up" she puts her hands to her face, crying into her palms, now unable to talk.

El really was a mess since it happened. She remembers the second time she visited, Hopper thanking her profusely as he went to his room to get some sleep, all El did was cry into her shoulder and fiddle with the supercom.

"I think she's doing slightly better, well-" she rolls her eyes to her words, "better than sobbing her eyes out all the time, and Hopper started going back to work too, so I think there's some improvement"

"We all just really miss you, Mike… I hope, wherever you are right now, that you can see us" she finishes, kneeling down and putting another flower on the grave as she touches the cold stone and gets up. She walks to her right, over to where Steve's grave was.

"Steve…" he voice is weak just from saying it, she lets the silence of the moment play out, contemplating what the guy was to her. "I don't think I'll ever understand why you decided to go along with the kids. I know Dustin says you got beat up and then you were taken there… but I just don't know why you decided to go with it" she explains, trying her hardest to repress the anger within her.

"I know that if you guys didn't go down there, then El and Hopper probably wouldn't have made it… you probably knew that, Mike" she says, glancing back at her brothers grave. "But… god dammit Steve" she admits, letting the pain go free of her, but restraining herself before completely breaking down.

She begins to shout through a fresh batch of tears that begin to form around her eyes, "you had a life to live! You said you'd probably end up working for your dad but I knew you could have done something great… why, Steve, why?" she cries, her knees crashing onto the ground as she lets go of all she had bottled up for her boyfriend.

She silently cries for another few minutes, letting the gusts of the trees do the talking. When she finishes with her crying, she sits and looks at the name for a little bit.

"You're an idiot, Steve Harrington, you've always been… but thanks" she finishes. Steve had always been an idiot, but deep down Nancy knew that he was a good guy, with a good heart, which hurts her even more. The world will forever know him as Steve Harrington, king of Hawkins High… and nothing more.

…

"C'mon El, there's gotta be something else we can watch besides Days of our Lives" Lucas whines, grabbing a can of coke from Hopper's old fridge, and walking over to sit on the rocking chair to the left of the tv. El looks at him and nods happily, "we could also watch Guiding Light or As the World Turns" she suggests.

Dustin rolls his eyes, "El, they're all the same thing" he sighs, putting a hand to his face and leaning back in Hopper's recliner he had called dibs on.

El furrows her brows and gestures to the TV "they're completely different!" she protests, "and it's not like your space movies which are the exact same!", Lucas chimes in at this, "El, you can't be serious, just because they all take place in space doesn't mean they're at all similar". El scoffs, giving him a skeptical look, "Star Wars and Star Trek both have aliens, spaceships, big galaxy governments, and lasers" she argues, listing off the similarities with her fingers.

"Yeah but those are all superficial" Dustin responds, El whips her head and furrows her brow again, this time in a less angry manner, "super-fishal?" she asks, "it just means it's on the surface, but if you look deeper, then you'd see that the characters and situations that take place are extremely different and complex" he argues, his face getting flustered as he gets really passionate about these things, El widens her eyes again, "just like my soaps!" she backfires.

"First of all, not true, and second of all, I thought you liked Star Wars!" Lucas rebukes, El raises her hands defensively, "it's just not my kind of movie"

"Bullshit, I saw you crying when Han Solo got frozen in carbonite" Dustin adds, referring to when the boys had came over to El's cabin for the first time. She remembers it clear as day, because it was the first time Hopper had gone back to work. He had let the kids in on where she was staying and invited them over to visit because Owens had recommended it.

Dustin had whined to El about how scary her new dad was, especially about keeping the location a secret, which made her laugh. It was nice to laugh again, to see her friends which made her so happy. A part of her was pained to see them, because they were never accompanied by Mike, but they all silently agreed to not talk about him, and just enjoy their lives.

She was glad Dustin and Lucas still wanted to be her friend, because Mike was really the only one who took a huge interest in her when they first met. They basically watched Star Wars, caught each other up on the events of the year while she was gone, and chilled out. She enjoyed feeling normal for once, even if a pretty big part of her was telling her that it was not okay to continue to be happy.

"That's just because Han Solo and Princess Leia were in love" El explains, looking down at the ground. She was glad her friends were here to distract her today, because today was the one month anniversary, even though it feels like so long ago. Silence fills the room, with Dustin and Lucas picking up on her sadness, Lucas sighs and breaks it, "what do you think Will?" Lucas looks over to Will who was sitting on the couch with El, his eyes are closed and a light snore escapes his mouth, but he immediately jumps up at the sound of his name. "What?" he says, looking around the room with wide eyes.

"Should we watch boring soap operas or some of the actual _good _movies I brought?" Dustin questions. He had brought a big bag full of VHS tapes and was excited to show El more than just Star Wars. "hey c'mon guys we don't have to watch a movie or a show" he suggests, standing up and gesturing to a nearby closet, "let's just play a game, you ever play Uno, El?"

El nods her head, "yes. Dad plays it with me when I'm bored, he says movies rot your brain", Dustin groans at this, knowing all too well the pains of having an adult that restricts screen time.

"Okay, but what about something more… complex?" Will says as he shuffles through the closet, finally finding a box labeled Monopoly. He brings it out and the other two boys, who give him confused looks, "that might be a little too complex, Will" Dustin remarks, knowing El probably doesn't have any kind of experience with that game.

"I want to play" she responds, walking up and grabbing the box. She mouths out the name of the game and sits down on the floor, opening it up and preparing it without much knowledge of what to do.

…

It turns out that El… sucks at Monopoly. Will, ever the nice guy, and easily the best player of the game, often helps her out by giving her loans, which she promises she'll pay back as soon as possible, even if that isn't true.

About halfway through the game, Lucas gives a look to Dustin and Will, and they both shift their eyes to El, who's too busy focusing on the game to see the boys all looking at her. Will and Dustin nod back, and Lucas loudly clears his throat, getting El's attention.

"Hey El, so there's this kid we met at school a little bit before you came back, and now she's a pretty good friend of ours, so we were wondering if you wanted to meet her sometime" he lets out, a little quicker than he wanted to. El's brows don't furrow, but any semblance of a smile disappears, as her face becomes stone cold and she looks back down.

"Orange hair?" she questions, Lucas and Dustin smile, "yeah, her names Max, she's actually pretty cool, I think you met-" Dustin grabs Lucas' arm and pinches it to stop him from talking.

Dustin remembers how Max extended her hand to greet Eleven a month ago, and how she just walked away. He knew El never had much of a grip on social greetings, but he could tell it was intentionally cold. A part of him hoped that she had forgotten about Max, and so if they brought her up as if she was a new person, El would be a little more understanding.

El keeps her head down, she definitely remembered that girl. The girl that got to hang out with Mike, and tried to steal him away from her. She remembers the day perfectly. She had broken Hopper's three rules, because not being able to see Mike was eating her up on the inside.

After some help, she found her way to the school and even found her Mike, even though it was after school hours.

She couldn't believe what she was seeing, Mike Wheeler, in the flesh, the boy who took care of her and made her feel loved, the boy she fell in love with herself, in the next room. He had no idea he was even alive, and she moved to open the door, but stopped herself.

A raging battle going on in her mind. _Mike isn't supposed to know. But he loves you and he'll keep a secret. But Hopper will be mad. But she's gone this far, he's going to be mad anyways. But it puts you in danger. But she loves Mike._

She decided, she puts her hand around the doorknob to open it, but before she can, she sees Mike with… another girl? She stood there and watched for a little bit, seeing Mike interact with this orange haired girl, she saw him smile with her, and even laugh, and at that moment she felt a pain in her heart, _what if Mike forgot about me?_

Her mind was telling her to open those doors and reveal herself, but her heart told her to leave… because he won't care that you come back. And in the end, that's exactly what she did, she left, too sad to confront Mike.

The memories flood her brain, she looks down and closes her eyes. That girl got more of a chance to be with him than El, and it hurts her heart to think about it. The frown becomes extremely visible on her face, which instantly makes her friends look to each other in worry.

"Don't like her" she whispers, looking to the ground, Lucas' brows contort. "C'mon, you haven't even met her. Just give her chan-"

"No!" she shouts, looking straight up at him with tears beginning to form in her eyes. Lucas' eyebrows widen back up, a look of sympathy now on his face. "El… what's wrong?" he says slowly, trying to decipher why she appears so emotional over some girl she'd never really got to know.

Instead of responding, she runs to her room, leaving the three boys to contemplate their happenstance. Dustin throws his arm at Lucas' in annoyance, "what the hell, man?"

"Wait so that was my fault?"

"You pushed her too hard!"

"Now how exactly did I do that? All I did was ask her to meet my girlfriend!"

"It doesn't matter! The point is you ticked her off, you apologize"

The boys begin to hear soft crying from the other room, and they collectively sigh in despair. After a bout of silence, Will speaks up, "Chief Hopper says she's been crying like that for weeks"

"Exactly, this isn't a time to push her, let's just let her be comfortable for a little bit" Dustin reiterates, Lucas puts his hands to his head in frustration, "Dude, I seriously don't understand what's so bad about introducing her to our friend group. She could use another girl to talk to anyway!" he argues.

Dustin scoffs, "you really think Max and El are anything alike? I actually don't know a single thing they have in common other than the fact that they're girls".

Lucas slumps down onto the floor, dreading having to apologize to El. Even though he felt bad, he knew he was in the right, even if Dustin did make a good point. Surprisingly though, Will chimes in again.

"Lucas has a decent point Dustin. El's doing pretty bad right now, but she's not…" he pauses to think of the right word. "Irrational. There's no reason that she wouldn't want to meet Max unless she was scared, but if she was she wouldn't have acted like that"

Lucas gestures his hand over to Will and looks at Dustin, "exactly! She hasn't even met her, so why would she get so upset?"

"So we're just gonna forget about the fact that El totally just ignored her when she stuck out her hand that night?" Dustin questions. Lucas sighs, "yeah… I don't know what was up with that" he admits. Will narrows his eyes, "what are you guys talking about?"

"You weren't awake, but when El finally revealed herself a month ago, she greeted everyone, and when Max stuck out her hand, she ignored her" Lucas explains

"Well if it was El's first and only time seeing her, then maybe she just associates her with Mike and how he died, that's pretty understandable" Will looks down on the last part, reminiscing about how he gets sad when anything related to that night is mentioned.

Everytime the boys tell him about going to see El, he's reminded of how much Mike actually cared about her, and how much she must have cared about him.

"That doesn't answer my question" Dustin retorts, then continues, "obviously she didn't know what was gonna happen to Mike, so why would she blow her off like that?" Dustin says, with considerably less annoyance in his words, now that they were on the topic of _that_ night.

"Does she even know what a handshake is?" Will asks, to which Lucas shakes his head, "no, I remember telling her what a spit swear was, and she saw me and Mike do it at the junkyard a year ago"

Will sighs in defeat, and after a moment of silence, Dustin looks to Lucas, "so you gonna say sorry?" he asks, but before he can answer, Will interrupts, "I'll do it"

"Why?"

"'Cause I've never got to talk to El one on one, and who knows maybe I'll get some sort of answer out of her" Will answers as he gets up and walks to the door. He knocks on it, and it slowly unlocks, with gravity opening it the rest of the way.

Will sees the figure of El, wrapped around Mike's old blankets, sniffling softly with her eyes red. He closes the door behind him and sits on her bed, letting the silence play out for a bit. He had to admit, this was a little weird.

He was never as uncomfortable around girls as the rest of the guys were, because he wasn't ever attracted to them, but talking to someone you don't know in general is a little awkward.

El is mostly confused right now. She could hear the boys bickering about something, but she couldn't figure out what they were saying, so she figured after a while they would all come in and apologize, even though she didn't want them to. But here she lays, with Will being the only other person in the room, which was the last thing she expected.

Both don't talk very much, but Will knows the burden of speech is on him right now, so he begins.

"El… are you okay?"

"No…" she says as she looks to her right, wanting to avoid eye contact with him.

"Why don't you wanna meet Max?" he asks sincerely.

"Already met Max, don't like her"

"Dusin says you saw her one time, and didn't want to shake hands with her… why?"

"Saw enough! Okay?" she groans in annoyance, wanting to be done with this conversation. Neither one talks for a little bit. El wants to look at Will to see what he might be thinking, but she can't bring herself to. "El…" he says compassionately, moving a hand to her knee.

She sniffles again, the tears back in her eyes. "S-saw her before… at the school". Will furrows his brows, "you were at the school?"

El nods, the tears now falling, "Wanted to see Mike… but _she_ was there" she lets more silence fill the air, with her now starting to sob. "I should have seen him!" she yells, moving over to hug Will as hard as she can and wailing into his shoulder.

Will's own eyes begin to water as he holds her. "I wish I wasn't _stupid_! I should've gone through the doors…"

Will quietly hugs El while she sobs for another few minutes, until she begins to calm down a little.

"You know, El… I never got to meet you when you first came to Mike's house. All I knew was that it was some girl who saved my life last year" he admits, fondly remembering how excited he was to see his friends after what he went through.

"Mike was really sad though. I knew he missed you a lot", he continues, "and then for the next year, he would always talk about how cool you were, or how compassionate you were… sometimes he would even talk about how pretty you were"

El begins to sob harder. _He really thought I was pretty_, she thinks to herself. "Mike was the only one I was able to talk to, when things got rough, even more than Jonathan or my mom" he begins to cry as well. "I really miss him, El" he finishes, finally hugging El back, as they both cry.

**So this wasn't nearly as long as the other two. For that I apologize. But fret not! You're not missing out on any content. With college comes a lot less time to write, but it also comes with a more organized author. While I won't be able to write as much, I will be able to write more consistently, and so you'll be getting a new chapter hopefully every day or every other day. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Many greetings! Haha so I lied. I know I told everyone that I would be updating every day, but I'm only able to get in one or two thousand words a day, and I don't want to be one of those writers that updates just for reviews and favorites. I hope none of you were disappointed. Given that I just naturally tend to take a while to write anything with substance, I decided that giving you guys at least 12,000 words each chapter would help it keeping you guys satisfied.**

**But it's finally here! I'm so excited to give you this chapter because it really starts to get into some real post-mike world stuff. But yeah, for future reference, don't believe any promises related to my writing schedule I make anymore. I'm what you would call the procrastinator type and my school schedule makes it difficult enough anyways. As usual, reviews make my day and suggested scenes/helpful criticism help a ton! Enjoy! **-Y

Chapter 4: Anger

…

_Clank!_

"Ahh, shit". El hears Hopper cursing through her door in the living room as he prepares dinner. She sits on the floor, arms wrapped around her legs as she lays on the wall. She didn't do this nearly as much as she used to, but she still loves to put time aside to think about Mike, and now that she put his blanket fort back up, to the best of her ability at least, she's able to think about him in there.

She moves over to a calendar she has taped to a wall and crosses a day out with her marker. She sighs, and picks up the Supercom.

"Hi Mike, are you there? It's me, it's El. It's day 30, 8:34 pm, I'm still here. I'll always be here Mike, so if you're there, please say something…"

"I hope you're not mad… about dad keeping me here. He just wanted to keep me safe, but I understand if you don't want to talk to me"

"I know I said all this yesterday, but I just wanted to let you know"

She releases the button to again hear static, and closes her eyes to shut out the tears. "I'm gonna be here everyday, forever. I promise"

After some silence to compose herself, she lifts the supercom back up to her head, "Lucas, Dustin, and Will came over again today… we couldn't choose what to watch so we played mono-poly"

"They tried to get me to meet Max today… but I don't want to meet her. She's bad…" El explains, once again letting the static of the walkie talkie be her only response.

She goes on to talk to Mike for another ten minutes before signing off, and resting her head back on the wall. _Mike's gone… deep down you know he is_, her subconscious would tell her, but she stayed strong, fighting the epitomic dread that's building in her stomach.

_Mike died. He was killed by the demo dogs because… because…_, El's eyes shot wide open. It just occurred to her that she has absolutely no idea how Mike died. She was just told that he died, and since then she never bothered to ask anyone about his death.

El allows the tiniest spark of hope to twindle in her heart, depending on how Mike died, he could still be alive. She begins to breathe faster and faster, the excitement of him possibly being alive making her shoot up to go ask Hopper.

_He could still be alive. He could still be alive. He could still be alive_

She dashes out of the blanket fort and practically throws the door to her room open, startling Hopper enough to shift his attention away from what he was cooking and onto El. "What's up, kid?" he asks, a little worried from her dramatic entrance.

She felt so excited to ask the question, but now that she's on the spot, she feels afraid to know the answer. "Uh- uhmm… h-uh…" she stutters out, stiffening with fear at the thought of knowing the possibly gritty details of her only love's death.

Hopper for his part is completely confused, shifting his eyes from her stiff and anxious appearance to the door, thinking about how emphatically she opened it. "C'mon El, spit it out" he ushers her. El looks down to the ground.

"Dad, h-how did Mike… die?"

Hopper's furrowed brows return to their normal position, as he takes in a deep breath. _This was bound to happen sometime, just lay it to her plain and simple_, he thinks to himself. The last thing he wants to do is scare El, but he knows he's not going to be able to come out of this conversation without making her daughter cry.

He turns around to take the boiling pot of spaghetti off the stove, and moves to sit down in his chair.

El is now the confused one, _why do I need to sit down with him to know?_ She wonders. With a bit of reluctance, she goes over to sit across from her dad. She keeps her eyes on him the whole time as she moves her chair back and slowly sits down. Silence hangs over the room for a few long seconds, as Hopper shifts around in nervousness.

"You probably know that Mike and the other kids were left at the house that night, right?"

El nods her head, so far keeping track of his story. "Well apparently, they didn't stay there, they went to the tunnels" he explains in his somber voice, El gives her dad a confused look. "Oh, right, the tunnels are like this network, under the ground, that all came from the portal"

She nods her head again, ushering him to continue. Hopper opens his mouth but stops for a quick second, choosing his words carefully. "Do you remember when there were a bunch of dogs at the elevator, but they all screamed and ran away?". El's eyes widen in understanding, "yes! That was weird…" she responds, and Hopper nods.

"Well, apparently that was Mike. They set the place on fire to distract them from you and me-"

"So they ran after Mike?" El interrupts softly, the fear palpable in her voice. Hopper sighs, "yeah, kid. They ran after Mike… Dustin, Lucas, and Max made it out, but Mike and Steve didn't". Hopper lets the cold silence play out for a while, giving his daughter the space she needs to take in the information.

He could see the tears beginning to form in her eyes, and her increased breathing. There isn't a doubt in his mind that she knows exactly how those dogs kill their victims, she saw the bodies of the scientists herself. And to think that Mike suffered the exact same fate… he expected her to cry, pretty hard.

Maybe she'll want to sleep in his room again, maybe she won't want to eat dinner, but after a few more excruciating seconds, something he didn't expect happens.

"...why?..." she says, the hurt visible in her voice. Hopper is at a loss for words. "T-they did it so the dogs wouldn't attack us, so we could get straight to our job". He knows deep down that Mike must have been worried sick about El, so it makes sense that he'd try to help in some way.

For El though, this excuse made no sense. "B-but… there weren't that many of them… I could have done it" she complains, acting as if proving Mike did a stupid thing would somehow bring him back.

"I'm sorry El, he cared about you too much to do nothing…" at this El gets up out of her chair, and clutches her stomach, her breathing now in a rapid panic. "I'm gonna throw up!" she exclaims, Hopper widens his eyes and point to the bathroom, "it's okay El, breathe, just go to the toilet" he replies calmly, but El just stands there.

The images flash in her mind, the anguish he must have felt while being ripped to shreds by such a terrifying beast. She feels the all familiar pain of wanting to vomit, but the more she thinks about it, the more it goes away.

She was sickened, but knowing how he died… that he died for no reason, that she didn't need help but he killed himself helping her anyways, it made her heart sick.

"Why!" she screams, clutching her face with her hands, the entire house violently shakes when she stomps on the ground, causing Hopper to fall over.

When Hopper looks back at her, he sees her with a face he hasn't seen on her since they had their argument over a month ago… she was _angry_. Before he can react, she runs out the door and shuts it, leaving Hopper to comprehend what just happened. It doesn't take him long before the adrenaline finally rushes into him as he realizes that his daughter just ran away.

He quickly gets up and reopens the door, seeing the silhouette of El in the far distance. He isn't a runner, especially compared to some kid who's light on her feet, but he sprints after her anyways, not bothering to put on a jacket despite the couple inches of snow.

El runs faster than she ever had before, not wanting to believe the truth about her love's death. The images flash through her mind, of the demo-dog eating him alive, going for the stomach first, and letting blood loss and shock do the rest.

She remembers Dustin and Lucas… and Max. _She made it out. They made it out. But Mike didn't… it's not fair it's not fair it's not fair it's not fair_.

At this point she was so far away from her cabin that she doesn't even see it in the distance, but she doesn't care. _Why would he do that! Not fair!_ She yells in her mind. An intense and unquenchable anger grows within her, she wants to fight back whatever caused this.

She imagines all of the terrible things in her life represented in one person. The one who took her from her mother, the one who never let her live a normal life, the one who killed Mike. She imagines using all her power to send that person straight to hell, where they can burn forever.

The pent up rage becomes too much for her, and as soon as she can hear the faraway footsteps of her dad, she remembers. _He didn't let me kiss him… he didn't let me see him for three hundred and fifty three days. And then when I see him, HE DIES!_

"AAHHHH!" she screams at the top of her lungs, letting all of the power, all of the love for Mike, come out of her through her abilities, she closes her eyes, but she can feel the snow around her fly in every direction, and she can hear the loud cracking of the trees. She practically explodes with anger, sending all of the trees of the forest, as far as the eye can see, breaking from the root and being flattened by her power.

This of course sends Hopper flying into the air as well, narrowly dodging a tree that would have fallen right on top of him had he not been thrown into the air. Luckily for him, he lands on a larger than average pile of snow, avoiding any injuries that might have come with his fall.

El opens her eyes and sees the devastation she's wrought. There isn't an upright tree for what looks like miles, but she knows she didn't run _that_ far away from her house.

But then again she didn't realize how fast she ran, after all she doesn't see her own house.

The sudden wave of exhaustion finally comes to her, hitting her like the ground after a 50 foot fall. She cries in anguish, holding her hands to her ears to stop the still flowing blood, she realizes just how much of her power she used, and immediately collapses, consciousness fading away from her eyes…

**December 5th, 1984**

_Knock, knock, knock knock, knock. Knock, knock_

The familiar knock of El's therapist rings through the confines of the cabin. It startles her, even though she could hear him coming from pretty far away, thanks to the windows once again being shattered by her outrage just a few days ago. This had made Hopper pretty mad, because not only did she shatter the windows, but she left the cabin without his permission.

Unfortunately though, Owens' jolly hum made itself clear to the two residents of the old house, with the ticking of the grandfather clock, which had almost broke during her episode, being the only sound before that, in addition to the low buzz of the tv and the crackling of the fire.

El turns the TV off and waits a little bit, hoping for Hopper to get up and answer the door. Even though he's in his room, she doesn't want to do anything for him right now.

_Knock, knock, knock knock, knock. Knock, knock_

The repeated knock on the door further rips her from her thoughts, and so, with a final glance at Hopper's door, she sighs and slowly moves the blankets off of her, the cold now biting at her again. She opens the door and sees Owens' friendly face, to which she resists.

After she slowly began to trust Owens in a few visits, her heart always warmed to see his smiling face, but this time he was _rudely_ interrupting her brooding session, so she kept her disinterested frown.

Owens however noticed this immediately, and narrowed his eyes, shifting his eyebrows upward in worry, "you okay there, El?" he asks. El opts to ignore him and walks over to her seat at the table, expecting him to do the same.

She sits down and gives him an annoyed look, hoping to get this over with as quickly as possible. But in a move she never expected, he instead shivers, looking to the blankets that were, just like a month ago, strewn across the window frame. The shiver itself is clearly fake, but he turns around and walks over to the couch by the fire.

El gives him a deranged look, and Owens holds back a smirk, knowing exactly what he's doing. It may not work, and he could even wind up in some trouble, but it certainly is funny. "Ehhh, I don't really feel like sitting by the cold today" he says as he fakes a yawn, pretending to be tired. He looks back and sees El shiver. Obviously the existence of the cold has made itself known.

"But… but" she lets out, completely confused as to why a professional would be acting this way. _But we're supposed to sit at the table_, she thinks to herself. She had grown accustomed to the routine, and she isn't about to let anything change at a time like this. Owens grabs the remote and turns on the TV, further startling her.

"W-wha-what are you doing?" she complains from her seat, gesturing her arm in front of her in confusion.

"Gettin' cozy by the fire"

"You're supposed to be helping me!" she shouts, letting her anger get the better of her. Owens remains casual, "I can't help you until you let me" he responds.

"What the hell am I doing right now?!" she fumes, putting in a word that her dad uses whenever he's upset. Owens keeps his head turned to the tv and away from her as he explains, "remember what I said, El. It's my job to understand people, and you're not exactly hard to read"

"What does that mean?! I j-" she's cut off. "El, I'm not an idiot, you and I both know that all you want to do is get this over with". El widens her eyes, completely surprised he was able to read her so easily. Her jaw lay dropped, partly embarrassed for him calling her out like that, and decides not to talk.

_He's completely right_, she thinks to herself, and it makes her even more mad, but after a moment of silence, Owens speaks up again.

"So when you're ready, I'll be watching some TV" he finishes. El turns her head back to the table in shame, feeling like some sort of chastised child, something she never felt with Papa or Hopper.

When Papa would be upset, she would feel afraid, and when her dad scolded or yelled, it was just as likely that it was over something that wasn't very important. But right now she feels bad, like she was definitely in the wrong, and it only made her more mad.

Owens makes his presence known again, acting as if nothing ever happened, "it's real chilly in here… hey!" he says as he notices something, making El shift her head towards him.

"Who's blankets are thes-", Owens is interrupted from the sound of El loudly getting up out of her chair. She wears the "Eleven stare", at least that's what her friends had called it, but this one is filled with anger.

"Don't. Touch. Mike's. Blankets." she lets out each word at a time to emphasize them. Owens looks back at her, his face showing no fear, only compassion. He simply sits there and waits for another response, which El notices. "I… I won't… I want your help" she continues weakly, looking back down at the floor.

Owens smiles at her, though she can't see it, and slowly begins to stand up. A grateful smile makes its way to her face as she moves to sit down again.

Owens goes over to the other chair and starts his conversation with a knowing sigh escaping him as he shakes his head. This confuses El, but she assumes he's just reading her mind again, so she ignores it.

In truth, Owens knows it's not going to be that simple, but takes what he can get anyways. "So, El… how you been doing?" he asks simply, easing his way into a hopefully deep conversation.

El eagerly nods, subconsciously wanting to prove to her doctor that she cares about these talks, "better…" she says, looking up at him, secretly hoping he'll just take it and run. Of course that isn't what he does, "and?" he prompts, knowing there's more to the surface.

"...and not better… worse" she admits, correcting her diction at the end. She wishes she had the language skills to convey what she feels, but she knows that if she could, she probably wouldn't want to tell him anyways. Owens sits in silence, letting her continue, "don't cry as much… but it still hurts"

"In what way does it hurt?"

Silence.

"El… what are you thinking?" he asks, seeing the focused expression on her face. She snaps back into reality to look at him, only to look down. "Thinking that… it doesn't make sense" she lets out, eyes intensely focused on the table as she ponders.

"Like… why… why does this happen to me? All the things… like Papa… and the Demogorgon… and Mike. It doesn't… it's not-" her train of thought is interrupted by Owens. "Fair?" he suggests, El's eyes widen as she points at him, "fair!" she recalls, remembering the word. "Yes… it's not fair. L-like, why does all the bad stuff happen to me?" she lifts her arms up in the air slightly in questioning, the doctor takes time to respond.

"Life isn't fair to a lot of people, El"

"But why me?" she complains, "I don't want this to happen" her voice breaks a little, tears starting to form in her eyes. Owens takes her hand, "of course you don't, but sometimes…" he looks intently upon El, eye to eye, as if he's staring into her soul. "sometimes you gotta roll with the punches… because one day you're gonna be thankful that you did" he finishes.

El furrows her brows at this remark, unsure of what it means. However, her mind quickly returns to the subject at hand. "Why does this happen? Why is life like this?" she whimpers, desperate that Owens can give her an answer that solves all of her problems.

He instead sighs and relents, "I don't know El, but you shouldn't feel jealous of other people-" he's cut off, "jealous?" El asks, her voice, if only for an instant, reverting to the wide eyed and curious girl she was a year ago. "it means you shouldn't get angry because you _think_ people are luckier than you"

"But everyone's luckier than me!" she exclaims, "Papa was mean! A-and the only person who cares about me was Mike…". El sniffles, holding back tears, and Owens jumps in, "that can't be true, El. You've got your friends, and your dad" he consoles, but El's face only contorts further into one of anger.

_Dad._ Her negative thoughts poison her mind, reminding her of all the things that kept her from Mike.

"dad says he's sorry that Mike died, and he's sad, but it's easier for him because he didn't love Mike, he doesn't understand!" she begins to rant about her dad, her face getting more flushed and her voice raising. "He didn't let me see Mike for three hundred and fifty three days! And then when I see him he dies! So I never got to talk to him again!" she shouts, her eyes beginning to water intensely.

Owens sticks his hands out and tries to calm her, "El, there's no need to shout, Hopper knows exactly how you feel"

"No he doesn't" is all she can retort, losing quickly against the calm man before her. "Remember, his daughter died, just like your Mike, he's lost plenty too". El slumps her shoulders as this, remembering what her dad said about his daughter Sara.

_The black hole… it got her_. The deepest part of her feels empathy for her death, but the pain of Mike surges through her again, reminding her why she's fighting this battle with an opponent she cannot defeat, existence.

"Doesn't matter…" she whispers. Owens narrows his eyes and shifts his ear towards her, beckoning her to repeat, "I'm sorry?" he says. The rage resumes its presence on her face yet again, "doesn't matter!" she yells, slamming the table as she does so. Owens quickly reels back, giving her a glare, "think about what you're saying, El" he warns, only succeeding in making her more upset.

"It's his fault!" she whines, tears now falling down her face. "He didn't let me see Mike! And now… a-and now he's gone! He's dead! Because of Hopper! Because of you!" she widens her eyes at this last accusation, pointing an accusatory finger at the older man.

Owens knows that this was to come eventually, especially with her pointing fingers left and right. Considering his past, he's honestly a little shocked it hasn't come sooner, but his expectations didn't stop it from hurting like a stab to the heart.

The guilt pangs over his head like a drum, attacking his senses, and he finds himself, for the first time, lost for words.

El's little arm trembles as she cries, still keeping the finger pointed at him, and Owens can only look down in shame. "You made me stay in the lab! If I left the cabin you would've taken me!"

Owens knows this to be true as well. Even if he was completely against it, there would have been nothing he could do. If they found her, they would have taken her, and they were definitely on the lookout.

"I'm sorry, El… truly I a-" Owens' apology is interrupted by the sound of Hopper walking through his door, clearly just waking up, "what's going on in here?" he questions. El looks over to him and can't help but feel the overwhelming jealousy… of someone who didn't just lose the one person that made them feel whole.

She stands up out of her chair, looks over to the cabinet, and flings a couple of plates at Hopper with her mind.

Hopper instinctively ducks them, but they still fly into the wall and shatter into bits and pieces. Owens' breath practically leaps out of his chest, as he, for the first time, is witnessing _anyone_ with psychic abilities move things with their mind.

He never had any reason to doubt her or Hopper, especially because they went towards the portal in the lab and came back out alive, but to finally see it for his own eyes was miraculous.

"Hey!" Hopper shouts, the adrenaline rushing through his body, utterly confused as to why his daughter would suddenly do that. They hadn't been on the greatest of terms for the past couple of days, but this just came out of nowhere.

"I hate you!" she screams, running to her room and slamming it shut before he has any time to react.

Silence plays out for the next couple of minutes, with the only sounds being that of Hopper's quick breaths slowing down as the adrenaline leaves him, and El's muffled cries on the other side of her door.

"I'm guessing you don't want me to pound on her door right now?" Hopper asks, his angry and gruff disposition getting the better of him. Owens shakes his head in response, "it's my fault… but if we make her come back out here then whatever I say is gonna go through one ear and out the other, especially at her stage right now"

"Yeah yeah…" he says, moving over to the fridge to grab a beer, as if almost getting a plate thrown at him was just another day at the job. "what'd you say it was again?" he says as he begins to chug his drink. "Anger" he responds, Hopper rolls his eyes and makes a annoyed hum, "yeah, surprised I couldn't guess that myself" he remarks, reminiscing on the past few days.

Owens sees him lost in thought, so he tries to shake it out of him, "that thing that happened a few days ago… was that her?" he inquires, pointing his thumb behind his back, Hopper solemnly nods. "That must've been fun" he jokes, but Hopper keeps his serious face and shakes his head.

"It was just what we needed, wasn't it?" he answers sarcastically "… I saw it on tv, and it's been hard getting any sleep since then" he explains, his mind flashing back to the tantrum that blew the trees every which way. When she first did it, he was lucky enough to land in a pile of snow and not hit a tree, and he let her cry in his arms. But they weren't the usual cries of sadness, these were more cries of umbrage.

She didn't act like she usually did after a cry either, she was quiet, and wore an angry frown on her face. She looked like she would bite your head off if you said the wrong thing, and the amount of attitude she showed him was already getting pretty tough to bare.

So it was all too easy to flip out when he saw the headline on the news channel, _Hawkins Own Tunguska!_ It said. Apparently it was felt with varying magnitude all across town, but the place where all the trees fell over was only a few minutes walk away from the house.

If she would've acted like she usually did, if she acted like her normal self, probably tucking her knees to her chest and looking like she was about to cry, and saying _sorry_ or something like that, he would've forgiven her.

But she didn't, she kept her frown, and her attitude. When Hopper had brought it up, it only led to a nasty fight, something reminiscent of when they were arguing about her seeing Mike. This fact didn't seem lost on her either, as every time she seemed to recall it, she would just get more upset.

Hopper knows more than anyone how if it wasn't for him, she would have gotten to see him. It hangs over his conscious everyday, and has been ever since that fateful night.

He can't remember if it was some time after or just a little bit after that he decided that he didn't regret his decision. Those scientists were still on patrol, and if her not getting to see Mike meant she would still be here, living a normal life, that was worth it to him.

Still though, he understands her anger, _but she doesn't have to be such a brat about it_, he thinks to himself, letting the annoyance come back to him.

"So yeah… we haven't really been in touch for the past few days, and I'd guess it's gonna stay that way for a bit, right?" he asks, expecting the worst possible answer. Owens opens his mouth to talk, but now words flow out. He looks to his side at nothing in particular, thinking of his next words. "Anger is probably the most or second most difficult to deal with" the doctor begins to explain.

"With denial, you gotta choose your words carefully so they don't end up getting distressed, but with anger you gotta choose your words even _more_ carefully," he says, walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water. "Now when dealing with a kid with psychic powers… I'm afraid I don't know entirely what to do"

Hopper sighs, letting him continue, "I'm not gonna lie to you Hop, it's gonna get worse before it gets better… but I recommend you get her out of here as soon as possible" he adds, waiting to see Hopper's response.

The police chief shoots himself up, immediately tense at the idea of getting her out there. Telling people about her existence was scary enough, and even with Bauman shutting the place down officially a few days ago, he still isn't sure whether getting her out there without his supervision is a good idea. "What?" is all he can spit out. Owens notices his apprehension and puts his hands out in a calming manner.

"You don't need to panic… the most they can do is use undercover agents in Hawkins, and that'll only get them so far with someone like El. And remember, I'm still hooked in with the goings on of the government, I'll keep them off her scent best I can" he consoles, not wanting to worry Hopper, but also knowing that he can't twist the truth.

"What d'you suggest?" Hopper eyes him warily, "well…" the doctor begins, getting his tangent ready, "there's this term in psychology called Frued's ego, or the social consciousness part of the brain. We both know her outbursts can cause damage, so by putting her somewhere with her peers, her social conscious keeps her from becoming overly emotional, because of the uncomfortable setting"

Hopper shakes his head, "nope. not gonna work. I've seen her cry in front of her friends, she's hardly uncomfortable around them"

"I'm not just suggesting she go out with her friends, Hop" he says as he clasps his hands together and waits for a response, hoping he catches on to what he's implying. Hopper widens his eyes after a few seconds, "no. nononono. Not gonna happen, Owens"

"Hopper" his voice becomes stern, "unless you want her drawing more attention to herself with these psychic episodes, then school is the best option for her"

"The last thing she needs is something as stressful as that shit, okay? Especially with her past. She knows that building too well… she gets nightmares about it all the time" he remarks, the sadness palpable in his voice as he remembers those nights, where she would be too scared to fall back asleep, so he would sit there with her and read to her… just like with Sara.

"What? Did you think she was never gonna have to go to school?" Owens retorts, trying to get past the man's stubborn facade. "Hop… it's the best thing for her. A distraction like that would work wonders on her healing process. She's got nothing to do but think about Mike when she's here all alone. You just gotta trust me Hopper" he finishes, hoping beyond hope that Hopper agrees.

It'll make both of their jobs easier, and would give her something to do, and somewhere to go where she isn't breaking stuff with her mind.

After a bout of silence from Hopper, Owens continues, "I'm not saying you have to do it now, but word's already spread across the entire town that you have a daughter. Look, I'll get you a doctors note that explains her psychological condition, and that'll make things easier on her with academics and whatnot"

"She's not ready to go to school yet, she's only up to the sixth grade-"

"Exactly! And at this rate, she'll be in 8th grade in no time"

Hopper heaves one final sigh before looking at him, consideration in his eyes. He points a finger at him "if I do this… it better work, Owens" he warns, the doctor chuckles at his threat, "Hop, c'mon, I'm a trained psychiatrist, you gotta trust me with this one"

"We'll see" he huffs. Walking back over to the kitchen to dispose of his finished beer.

_This ain't gonna be easy_

**December 12th 1984**

_Knock_

**December 19th, 1984**

_Knock_

**December 26th, 1984**

_Knock knock_

**January 2nd, 1985**

_Knock,_

**January 9th, 1985**

_Knock_

**January 16th, 1985**

_Knock_

The tried and true knock echoes throughout the house once more, where El and Hopper are eating their dinner. Neither one of them have really touched their food, as they're both anxious to hear what the doctor has to say for the both of them.

Once the knock is heard, both let out silent sighs of relief, with El quickly jumping up and opening the door. "Hello doctor Owens" she lets out, there being no hope nor despair in her voice.

She moves aside to let him in, and he takes his heavy coat and gloves off on the coat rack, kicking the side of the door to let the snow off of his boots. "Call me Sam" he replies as he rubs his hands together to warm them up.

"Hey, listen" Hopper calls as he goes over to Owens to shake his hand. "We'll work on having the meetings at your office instead of you hiking in the sub zero degrees up to our place, yeah?" he offers, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Only if El's comfortable with it" he replies, raising his hands up and gesturing to El. El moves her head around the house in thought, "ask me again later?" she suggests, taking a phrase out of Hopper's book. Owens claps his hands together enthusiastically like he always does, "alright, sounds like a plan" he says, moving over near the fire, where they had agreed a few weeks ago that it should be the new therapy spot.

"You gonna eat this, El?" Hopper asks as he moves back over to the table, El shakes her head in response, and turns back to Owens, expecting him to start off the conversation as always.

"So, El, how's this week been on you?" he gets straight to the point, knowing that there's no use in dilly dallying. El shrugs in response, "bad… but I'm not surprised" she says, making Owens' brows narrow.

"Why aren't you surprised?" he asks, to which she shrugs again. "My friends tell me all the time how boring and hard school is" she says with boredom in her voice, which Owens notices. _Attitude? Check_ he thinks to himself. This is a very common symptom of the anger stage of grief, and an even more common symptom of being a teenage girl, so it's hardly unexpected.

"Has it been hard? Doing homework and dealing with new people?" he inquires, to which El looks down in contempt, "obviously. I'm stupid, remember?" she bites back, catching Owens off guard.

"What makes you think you're so stupid?" he quickly asks, knowing how dangerous her self esteem getting down is. She looks back at him with a sarcastic, _are you serious?_ look.

"I don't understand any of it!" she raises her voice just a little, causing Owens to immediately put his hands out in a calming gesture, as if she just screamed at the top of her lungs. "I don't know math, or science, or reading novels, o-or running a mile in PE, or what happened one hundred years ago!" she complains, throwing her hands down in anger.

The memories of her first day begin to flow out of her mind…

**January 14th, 1985**

"You're not gonna eat anything? You'll get hungry, kid" Hopper asks as he notices El doing everything with her breakfast other than eat it. "Even your Eggos?"

"Don't like Eggos anymore…" she responds, shooting a glare at Hopper for reminding her about them. Hopper rolls his eyes and leans back, _right, right, _he says to himself, remembering the first time she looked upon a box of Eggos after Mike's death.

It was during her constant crying phase, and Hopper had finally bought Eggos to cheer her up, but he must've forgotten that nothing would cheer her up. The mere sight of the treat she used to love had made her burst into new tears, and she ran into her room. "Not even Eggos…" Hopper remarked to himself as he sighed.

"I get it kid, you're scared, but starving yourself isn't gonna do you any good" he tries to reason, but El just looks away, "not hungry, dad" she says in an annoyed half yell. Hopper finally gives up and sighs, "have it your way, kid"

El takes this as his permission for her to leave the table, so she scoots out of her chair and goes back into her room to get dressed out of her pajamas. After about ten minutes of trying on different clothes and immediately tossing them aside, she finally decides for a simple black t-shirt with a logo of some band she didn't know, definitely a Hopper hand-me-down, and a comfortable yellow plaid overshirt, with a well fitting pair of jeans.

Joyce had come over with Will just a few days earlier to say hi, and she had brought makeup with her as well for school. While El didn't know what it was at first, as soon as she saw the familiar brush with a weird powder, and a small mirror, the memories of Mike hit her like a truck, and she ran to her room.

It was only after another talk from Will when she confessed that Mike had put makeup on her before they went to the school did she agree to see Joyce and Hopper again. After the situation was explained, Joyce felt awful, and apologized to her what seemed like a thousand times over, but El had insisted that it was okay. It always seemed so easy to get mad at Hopper and Owens and just about everyone else in her life, but not Joyce. For El, though, the moral of the story is that she doesn't like makeup

She grabs the backpack sitting on her bed, with all of the notebooks and folders her friends had given her, and looks around the room again, feeling like she was missing something. She scans the room a few times over, before her eyes lay on the blanket fort in the corner of her room. After a second of hesitation, she decides that she has the time to talk to Mike a little before she has to go.

She slowly walks over to the fort and sits within it, grabbing the the supercom that lays on the mound of covers.

""Hi Mike, are you there? It's me, it's El. It's day 74, 6:21 am, I'm still here. I'm gonna start school today…"

Radio silence.

She sits for a while longer, letting the white noise of the supercom be her response.

"The prince-ipal is very nice, and says I'll share my classes with at least one of my friends…" tears begin to cascade down her soft face. "I w-wish you were still here, Mike… I wish I could hold your hand on my first day, a-and you could kiss me on the cheek" her last words were barely above a whisper as she tries desperately to not let her cries be heard by Hopper.

"I w-would have gone to the snowball with you… I promise I won't go with anyone else, Mike" she whispers, finally shutting off the supercom and holding the covers up to her face.

The anger comes back to her with new force, and she screams into the blanket with all her might, even though all that's able to come out is a choked whisper. She throws the covers off of her and feels the urge to throw something with her powers. But knowing that that would get her in trouble with Hopper, she refrains and breathes in and out slowly, wiping her eyes and nose.

"C'mon kid! We gotta go!" Hopper yells through the door, El tries even harder to compose herself, and after another minute she's forced out of her self soothing by the rough slam on the door, "school's not starting any later" he reminds her, so she once again grabs her backpack and walks out of her door.

Luckily for her, Hopper doesn't seem to notice the puffy redness of her eyes, so she acts as casual as she can and puts on her heavy coat, stepping out into the cold.

…

Hopper's vehicle slowly stops at the entrance of the school, the presence of a cop car causing kids to steal glances at it. _We're off to a great start_, Hopper sarcastically remarks to himself before turning to El, who's busy looking out the window of the car with tentative excitement.

"You see 'em anywhere?" he asks, not even knowing where her friends had told her to meet them. The longer El scans the large area, the more frantic her breathing becomes, which makes Hopper worry even more. _Things are just going great aren't they?_

Luckily for both of them, El's breathing quickly turns into a sigh of relief, as she notices Dustin and Will talking by the bike rack. "I found them" she says, the excitement forming into dismay as she realizes that she now has to leave the literal and figurative warmth of the car.

Hopper sighs, worried about her first day of being in a completely new place without her dad. "Okay, El. Remember, no powers whatsoever" he says sternly, "and if there's an extreme emergency, find the lamp in my office with your mind, and make it flash in the secret pattern, just like the door" he knocks his fist on the window in the familiar pattern, _knock knock, knock, knock knock knock_

El nods her head, not giving her full attention to the words, anxious to get out but at the same time hesitant. "O-okay dad" she replies as she slowly opens the door and gets out. After she closes it shut, she sees her dad give a final wave goodbye until he pulls out of the drop off, and she watches him until he's completely out of sight.

She is now alone.

She imagines, in an alternate universe just like the upside down, where everything was the same, except Mike didn't die. She finds herself immediately envious of those hypothetical people, and she imagines her own Mike, holding her hand with her right now, as they watch the police car pull away.

"C'mon El, let's go see our friends" he would say, and she would smile in response. They would walk together, holding hands where the rest of the kids could see them, telling them that they loved each other and each other only.

But here she stands, out in the cold… alone. She looks to her left, where Mike would have stood, and she sees no one, only absence.

In this universe, El is alone.

The dreadful feeling, not dissimilar to the one she got at the funeral, now returns, but she begins to walk in order to shake it off.

She isn't sure if it's the ice on the ground, or just her legs, but she wobbles with each step as she gets closer to the building. She feels like she could trip at any second, but she keeps moving forward, stretching her hand out so that her imaginary Mike could hold it, but also to steady herself.

The sickening feeling goes away however, as she feels a soft mitten touch her shoulder. She turns around quickly in fear, her eyes wide open, but the scared look goes away as soon as it appears, as she realizes that it's her good friend Lucas.

"Hey El, welcome to Hawkins Middle" he says as he gestures to the large sign on the front entrance. Without anything to say back, El shifts her eyes to her left and her right before she replies, "thank you" which causes Lucas to give a knowing laugh.

They both make there way over to the other two, who still haven't noticed them. Lucas shouts to get their attention, making El jump again, but he apologizes as soon as he sees what he's done.

Will and Dustin both look over to see the pair, shouting "El!" in unison as they go over to give her a hug. "You ready for your first day at school?" Dustin asks, to which El apprehensively nods her head. "Wrong! You never know what these guys are gonna do, and it can be pretty scary sometimes" he warns her, making her frown and back up in fear. "Stop it! You're scaring her!" Lucas interjects, lightly shoving Dustin.

Dustin raises his hands in defense, "I'm just giving her the facts, better to know it now before it hits her like a truck" he retorts, "shut up!" Lucas replies, hitting him again, "you shut up!" Dustin bites back, returning the hits before it's an all out sissy fight, making El laugh at the chaos of two of her best friends.

Will rolls his eyes and walks over to El, ignoring the fighting couple. "It's really not that scary once you get used to it, and some of the teachers are pretty nice" he explains, and El nods her head again, but she knows that he's not giving her the full story.

After a short conversation, the kids begin to walk into the school. Lucas stays behind and Dustin leads in front as Will sticks by El's side, pseudo-protecting her from the perceived dangers of middle school.

El tries her best to memorize each hallway they pass, but it isn't long before she's completely lost, with only her friends to guide her around. Not much longer, the kids stop seemingly in the middle of some random hallway, earning a confused look from El.

"Hey, can I see your schedule for your classes?" Dustin asks, which only confuses El more, but she grabs it out of her backpack nonetheless. Dustin grabs it and stares at the top before pointing, "do you know what that is?" he asks, looking back up at El. She stares down the word before forming it with her mouth, "lock-er?" she replies, and the boy enthusiastically nods.

"Yeah! That's the place we hold our stuff in, my locker number is 218, Lucas' is 219, and Will's is 217, do you know what yours says?" he asks.

"You don't have to baby her, she can figure it out on her own" Lucas scoffs, to which Dustin flips him off, "hello? genius? it's her first day of school, she's not gonna know this stuff"

El reads over the number right next to the word and looks back to Dustin, "two one five?" she asks, Dustin nods his head again and begins to teach her how to open her locker. After failing multiple times, she finally cracks and flicks her head to the right, instantly opening up the locker.

The boys instinctively look around them, making sure no one saw what just happened. "El, we gotta teach you how to use the locker" Lucas remarks as he moves to open his own, and the other boys do the same.

Separated by 216 and Will's locker, Lucas whispers into Dustin's ear, "so are we just not gonna tell her that Mike's locker was 214?" he asks, silent sadness in his voice, Dustin bows his head down and sighs, "that's exactly what we're gonna do"

…

The boys and El have to make themselves into a single file line when walking into their first period class, and so El's the last person to walk into the classroom. Will, Dustin, Lucas instantly walk over to their seats, but El stops in the front of the classroom, it just occurring to her that she has no idea where to sit.

She looks around the room in fear, something Will seems to pick up on, and he gestures to the seat next to him and gives her a reassuring nod. But before she can move over to the seat, the teacher stops her, "one second, miss Hopper, I've gotta introduce you to the class" he says lightheartedly, as if that's just the most fun thing to happen to you on your first day.

She looks over to her friends, who all either have worried or resigned faces, and the class bell rings. "Dustin, drum roll" the teacher says, and Dustin, somewhat hesitantly, obliges. He turns over his book and begins to tap on it over and over again, giving El an "I'm sorry" face.

"Class, please welcome, the latest passenger to join us on our curiosity voyage, Jane!" he announces enthusiastically. She looks around the room quickly, panicked, but is relieved to find that no one is paying all that much attention to her. "Welcome aboard!" he says, El slowly nods and takes his silence as an excuse to move over to her seat, but before she can she is once again stopped.

"Oh! One second, Jane" he says as he moves over to his office space and grabs a large book from the cabinet. "You're gonna need this for the class" he smiles happily, but as he gets a closer look at the girl standing in front of him, he narrows his eyes.

"You look kinda familiar… any chance I've seen you before?" he inquires. El not so subtly widens her eyes, she looks back to Dustin and Will who share her worried glance, but they don't say anything. "Uh" she mutters, not knowing what to say, "I don't… know?" her statement comes out as more of a question than anything else, but after a moment of terrifying silence, the teacher relents. "Huh. Well, in any case, it's nice to meet you, my name's Mr. Clarke" he says as he gestures towards the class, "pick any seat you want"

El quickly makes her way to the open seat, and sits down, finally letting a long sigh out. Will puts a hand on her shoulder and gives her a nod to ask if she's okay, she nods back.

Her classes were, in a word, boring. Science was her first period, which she liked because all of her friends were there and the teacher was friendly, her second was Mathematics that she shared with Lucas.

The teacher was a little bit strange, and all the other students seemed to share El's opinion, as he often told cheesy jokes and was very particular about school rules, but she liked him.

Her third was Spanish, which she shared with Dustin. She was happy with the class, because there was a lot of partner work, and when the teacher told the class to work with a partner, Dustin gave her the goofiest look, which always made her laugh. It was also funny to her how Dustin couldn't pronounce the words if his life depended on it, but overall she hated the actual concept of there being _more_ than one language, after all, it was hard enough to learn English. It didn't help that her teacher often called on students out of the blue, and they would stumble a lot. The teacher didn't call on her that day, but she knew it was coming.

After that, she ate lunch with all her friends, and while the boys acted like the school food was the plague itself, she found herself enjoying it. Lucas had told her that her standards obviously weren't very high, with the mush she probably ate at the lab and the frozen dinners Hopper would feed her.

Her least favorite, though, was absolutely her PE class in fourth period. She shared it with both Dustin and Lucas, which was nice, but it was dreadful from start to finish. The first thing she noticed is how the fitness teacher was strangely overweight, to which Dustin told her "they're all like that".

To her horror, however, she was told that she would have to leave Dustin and Lucas to change clothes in the locker room. She was utterly shocked at this, given everything Mike had told her about privacy, having to change with other people she didn't know made her extremely uncomfortable. She asked the teacher why she couldn't change with Dustin and Lucas, to which he laughed, "I'm guessin' you're an only child, then?" he remarked, leaving without giving any kind of answer.

Lucas explained to her that it's okay to change in front of girls but not boys, which made her confused. "Because boys and girls are different" Lucas explained, scratching the back of his neck in nervousness, "how?" she asked, and Dustin went red while Lucas coughed. "Lower voices?" Dustin answered, although it sounded more like a question.

"What does that got to do with it?" she asked again, getting a little annoyed at the boys' apprehension. "I don't know, El, we don't make the rules" Lucas explained as him and Dustin both rushed into their locker room.

The room itself smelled like excess perfume and sweat, which were too _very_ clashing scents. The changing process itself was extremely uncomfortable, with El noticing that some of the girls wore a half shirt under their shirt. It didn't even cover the belly button, and she overheard some girls calling it a "bra" which confused her even more. _Maybe they need that because they're getting fat_ she thought to herself, noticing the relatively large lumps in their chests that she only saw with older women like Joyce.

Come to think of it, there was a lot of girl talk she didn't understand, like "period", "tank-top", "cut off's", and "braid", all words she didn't know. Although, one of the girls next to her did try to be friendly. She stuck out her hand and tried to engage her in conversation, even though El was really awkward compared to the _normal_ girl she saw before her.

All she remembered in the end was "Mary" as her name, which was something she needed to remember just in case she needed her help with something. The exercising itself was also not very fun. During their runs, Lucas and El constantly had to wait for Dustin to catch up, claiming it was some sort of back cramp or something, but she understood.

During their pushups, El could only manage to do a few before her arms gave out, and she could only last a couple of seconds with her planks. Sometimes the school boys would look at her and seemingly size her up, with one boy in particular constantly shoving into Lucas during the run, who licked his lips and gave her a wink. When asking Lucas, he couldn't hide the frown on his face as he said, "don't worry about it". She would normally keep pressing, but something about his tone told her to leave it alone.

The class right after gym was her English class. She was admittedly better at it than Spanish, but not by a lot. The teacher was really strict, and, according to Will, was notorious for being a rough grader, which scared El a lot.

She shared the class with no one, making her feel scared and alone for the majority of the class, but Mary was there right next to her again, although this time she had a group of friends near her. She also found herself strangely respecting the teacher, despite his thick Balkan accent making it hard for her to understand him.

After that, she had her one and only elective, which was a class that she could choose, although the boys practically forced her to choose computer science because they were all in the class. And she ended up really liking the class too.

The teacher was a lot like Mike, kind of socially awkward and weird, but this guy was bald and pretty short. She had it with Will, Lucas, and Dustin, but the computers themselves always gave her a strange sensation. She had seen those thick boxes with green screens in the lab, and so they gave her chills.

And finally, her seventh period was history, taught by a completely average guy. She wasn't really sure what to think about the guy, only that she didn't have any problems with him, and he was very nice to her.

But after one student called his name, "Mr. Matthews" it finally clicked for her. He was a good friend of Hopper's whom he knew back in High School. So naturally it makes sense that he would be one of the first to know about El's fake backstory, and he was very sympathetic about it. Other than that, however, she found that she really loved history. Learning about the how's and the why's of the way things are today fascinated her more than any other class combined, and she was lucky enough to have Will sit right next to her, although that may have been thanks to the teacher.

But by the end of the day, she's completely exhausted. Her and Will walk over to the bike rack at the end of they day to meet with Lucas and Dustin, but they aren't there quite yet, so they stand in peace. Or at least as peaceful as it can be with other kids running around and yelling left and right. It isn't long before Will speaks up, attempting to break the now awkward silence.

"So what do you think, El?" he asks, gesturing towards the school. El shrugs her shoulders gently, not really having time to think about it. She knew she liked history, and disliked just about everything else, but her biggest concern was the prospect of having to do this for four more days, and then again after two free days. And again. And again. And again. _It's stupid_, she thinks to herself.

The image of her walking around the school with Mike at her side, comforting her and keeping her company, eats at her heart. It could have been so much more exciting, the chance to go out and be her own person… but it just isn't the same.

She remembers that she's supposed to be waiting near the car pick-up line, so her friends accompany her. Lucas stops midway, widening his eyes like he forgot something, "sorry guys, I promised Max I'd meet her cause I haven't got to talk to her today" he explains as he runs behind them.

Normally El would feel bad for not letting Lucas hang out with his friend, but all she feels is spite towards the obnoxious red-head. She tries unsuccessfully to hide a frown as she quickly moves back, but Will grabs her shoulder, making her turn around to meet him. "Do you wanna come over to say hi?" he asks while he points his thumb back, his eyes wide with optimism.

_Sorry_, she would normally say. She doesn't want anything to do with Max, but she also doesn't want to be mean to her friends. In fact, if she's completely honest with herself, she would probably look down and shuffle around nervously until Will relented, but something within her snapped. "No." she states coldly, turning back around and quickly making her way over to the car line. She's too afraid to turn around to see Will's or Dustin's faces, but she takes the fact that they don't run after her as evidence that they're pretty shocked.

She holds back the tears that begin to form in her eyes, getting mad at herself in the process. _Why are you crying? You're being stupid_. She's glad that she's immediately able to spot her dad's car sitting in the line, because having to wait would have made things even more awkward.

She swings the car door open with a little too much force and jumps in, earning a startled look from Hopper. After a moment of silence he turns around in his seat to face her, "hey where are the boys? I wanna thank them for keeping you company on your first day" he asks her. She tucks in her knees to her chest and shrugs, struggling with all her might not to cry in front of her dad.

But she lets out a weak sniffle. And Hopper's face falls. _I shouldn't be surprised_, he thinks to himself. School has always been a stressful thing to deal with, and she's always had stressful things to deal with, so it was never going to be a good combination.

Nevertheless, his heart seems to melt at such an innocent sniffle, and his compassionate dad voice, a voice he seemed to have gained a little bit after he took in El, came on. "What's wrong?" he asks sympathetically, causing El to break into light tears and sniffle harder. _Stupid question_, he thinks to himself. Of course he knows what's wrong. He's surprised however when he sees her brows furrow in annoyance, and an angry frown show up on her face.

_Stop crying stop crying stop crying. You're a mess_, she keeps telling herself. A part of her wants nothing more than to bawl her eyes out and tell Hopper everything she's feeling, and another part of her is calling her stupid for even thinking that. "I-I'm okay" she weakly lies.

Hopper sighs, knowing he'll be getting no more information out of her. "Do you just wanna go home?" he asks, and she nods, silently thanking him.

**January 16th, 1985**

If it was easy then, it was only going to get worse. Lucas told her she was at a disadvantage when it came to school because she had to start in the second semester, but it did little to make her feel better.

She feels like she's an idiot, not understanding almost anything they threw at her. The second day was significantly worse than the first, she wasn't sure if it was because the stuff they were teaching got harder or she was just starting to get exhausted. She curses herself at the thought, thinking yesterday was actually easy by comparison to today.

Today, she was first introduced to Troy. He had winked at her a few times during gym class, completely out of the loop as to what it meant, but he finally introduced himself today, calling Lucas and Dustin toothless and midnight. He looked strangely familiar, but she pushed it off, her immediate attention going to her friends.

The Spanish teacher finally called her name, too. Obviously, she embarrassed herself, and some of the meaner kids snickered. And one class after another, she seemed to embarrass herself, even if it was all in her head like her friends insisted.

_I'm stupid… I'm so stupid_, she constantly thinks to herself, going in and out of every class. The cynical part of her mind gets the better of her, telling her that each day is only going to get worse, and she believes it. In the presence of Owens, she finds herself getting more angry than she had in a while. _Easy for him to talk. He has no school_

"This is what I need…" she comments sarcastically after a bout of silence with Owens. She begins to think aloud, letting it all out to a man she doesn't particularly want to talk to. "After everything that's happened" her voice gets weak at the last word, but she regains her composure, "after everything that's happened, I have to do this"

Owens sighs and places a hand on her knee, though she quickly moves away from his grasp. Of course he's had second thoughts about this school idea, but he knew she wasn't going to be making any progress with her grief by sitting around and just _existing_.

Every time he wrestles with his decision, the argument in favor always comes out the victor. She needs this, and she needs to realize she needs this.

"El… there's a lot of things that have happened to you. There's a lot of things that have happened that not a lot of people can say have happened in their whole lifetime. But this, El… this ain't one of 'em" he explains.

El shoots him a nasty glare, but he continues, "almost everyone goes through school, and everyone has to deal with those stresses. I'm not saying those stresses are invalid, but you can't blame school for this. It didn't deal you a worse hand than it did any other kid, even if the rest of life did"

He lets silence play out a little, with El keeping her head down, definitely not even considering the doctor's words. "I know it doesn't sound like it, but school really will help you in the long run. You'll make friends, learn enough to get a job, and _live your own life_" he reasons, putting emphasis on his last words.

He can see it clearly, El slowly dragging her way through life, chilling in Hopper's cabin until she's old enough to move out, discovering alcohol, and later down the line, drugs. He's seen what happens to people who let grief consume them, and he'll be damned if he lets that happen to the girl who never had a chance to live happily.

El feels a slight shift of emotions over Owens' last statement. She had never weighed what the future might look like if she continues to act like this… but there's something more. An ugly feeling begins to fester at the deepest core of her heart and mind, El not having the slightest clue as to what it is.

All she knows is that it's not going to go away.

The concept has begun to take root.

And it will strangle her until she realizes.

This ugly feeling.

**Aaaaand scene. Was this filler? Kind of :/ There was only one particular scene that I was excited to write _before_ writing this chapter, which was the "El breaks down all the trees" scene. I figured her pain would probably be so great, that such a mighty outburst seemed natural. There still is some really good anger stuff coming down the road, but I felt this chapter deserved to end right here, at this ugly feeling. Did you guys like the chapter? If so, tell me! If not, tell me! I really want to know how I can improve my writing because this story is no where near done and the biggest blow to the heart is yet to come ;) Have a good night! **-Y


	5. Chapter 5

**Many greetings! Yeah yeah I know this took a long time, but shit happens and I don't want to bore you with my excuses. I really liked writing this chapter, as we have officially hit the midway point (yes this story will be 10 chapters) and things are going to get very interesting, as there's a whole lot of setup. Please review if you can, and enjoy! **-Y

Chapter 5: They Don't Understand

**January 29th, 1985**

Another day, another piece. Another piece of El's weary spirit falling and floating softly to the cold ground, like a feather. She peeks her head up for an instant to make sure she knows where she's going, before sending it straight back down. The familiar smell of the school hallways enveloping her in its thickness. She feels the air of anxiety compress her neck, forcing her to subconsciously stare at the floor, the heavy backpack doing her no favors.

She wears one of her four pairs of blue jeans, and a long sleeved white shirt with the occasional horizontal red stripe. It was a particularly cold day today, so she wears her thick brown jacket as well.

The loneliness stabs at her heart again, feeling like a freak when she's all by herself. Everyone else at the school is talking to someone, and some are even holding hands… Which makes El sick with anger. _They don't even deserve it_, she'll always think. The ugly feeling stirs deep inside of her everytime she sees it. It isn't just anger, it's a deep kind of hurt, because she knows that no one is ever going to make her feel the way Mike did.

Every time the ugly feeling makes itself known, she pushes it down further, feeling a sense of shame at how sad she gets.

With a quick flick of her head the locker opens immediately, but she kneels down a bit and fiddles the key pad with her fingers to make it seem like she had to open it conventionally. She opens it up and is greeted by the plain calendar that's taped to the inside of her door. She grabs the sharpie that's hanging upon it, and marks the numbers 89 on it.

Day 89

She would never give up… no matter what Owens or Hopper told her. Even if the tree was dead, it would never be chopped down. She closes the door ever so slightly to make sure that no one is watching her while she grieves to herself. She slings off her backpack and puts it inside, along with her coat, and takes out her papers for her first three classes. She remembers how the boys insisted that her science folder be green, because it "just had to", so she gets that out first, along with a pencil.

She takes another glance at the calendar, being momentarily taken out of school once again, and back to a time when she was happy, although this time she's forcefully taken out of it when she sees Will's figure approaching. "Hey El! What's up?"

El quickly and noticeably slams her locker shut, not wanting to show Will. She knows that he's completely aware that El's been counting the days, because he has too, but he's always just so understanding it makes her mad. She doesn't _want_ to talk about it, even if Will _convinces _her to want to talk about it.

The loud bang startles the boy a bit, to which El apologizes for. "You look tired" he remarks, El shrugs, "Tuesday"

She very quickly learned the stigma of everyone hating Mondays because they were the start of the week, but for her, Tuesday was easily worse. She was never able to explain it very well to her friends, because of her sub-par vocabulary, but in her mind it makes perfect sense.

"On Monday, it's not as bad because the weekend was yesterday, so you got a break" she would always say. "But on Tuesday, you're tired from Monday, and you _still_ have most of the week left"

Her friends, most notably Lucas, would always overdramatically scoff. "You're just saying that cause Hopper gets groceries on Mondays". She wasn't quite sure what groceries were, but when they told her, she had to admit that that was a big part of it.

Will however, simply nods, accepting the fact that El doesn't like Tuesdays. "Don't worry, Mr. Clarke's starting a new chapter today, so there won't be any homework"

"Chapter?"

"Yeah…"

"Like in a book?"

"No, every two weeks Mr. Clarke teaches us a chapter, and then we take a test on it"

El's face turns to a confused frown, knowing that yesterday they had taken a test, but Mr. Clarke told her that she didn't have to take it because her first day was in the middle of the chapter. "Will I take a test on this new chapter?" she asks with dread in her voice.

She's never taken a test before, and was relieved when the boys told her it was nothing like the tests in the lab, but they still didn't look very fun.

Will shrugs, "I don't know, sometimes the chapter will have some stuff that was taught before, and you may not know that stuff" he tries to assure her, not really wanting to lower her spirits more than they obviously were right about then.

El looks down at the digital watch that was from Mike's box of things, the one that he gave her back in 83, and sees the time, 7:58.

On cue, the class bell rings a minute later, signalling Will and El to walk over to the classroom. Will taps her arm as they're walking, "hey El, Lucas says there's an official AV club meeting after school today," he says, putting air quotes when he says official meeting.

El rolls her eyes, "don't we go every day?" she asks, knowing that as soon as she joined the AV club, her and the boys would always make their way straight to the "heathkit". On her first visit, she didn't stay for long, as the image of the radio sent her back to over a year ago when Mike snuck her into the school to find Will.

She burst into tears, doing everything in her power to not immediately destroy the heathkit with her mind in pure rage. Instead, she ran off into the girls bathroom where none of them could follow her, and found Hopper's desk lamp with her mind, flashing it in the same order as he did with his knocks.

Not five minutes later, Hopper had come in with a pump action shotgun ready to protect El, but she told him that she just wanted him to take her home. He had to lightly scold her for using that lamp trick for anything other than a "life-threatening emergency" but she didn't listen very much as she cried in his arms.

The boys, especially Will, felt extremely bad for making her cry, and promised that they would find another place to meet. But luckily for all of them, El forced herself to go back into the room, and slowly but surely the pain became less severe, to the point where they were hanging out every day.

But there's never been an "official AV club meeting", leading her to believe that Lucas, the new club president, has something up his sleeve. And by the looks of it, Will has the same feeling.

Nevertheless, they both make it to Mr. Clarke's classroom on time, and they notice Dustin fully engrossed in a comic book, while Lucas is nowhere to be seen. "Where's Lucas?" El asks Dustin as her and Will approach him, Dustin sighs and makes a face she can't decipher.

"Okay… El, please please please don't get mad" he begs, clutching his hands together and holding near his chest, "but Lucas is back there", Dustin points over to the back corner of the room, where Lucas and _Max_ are talking together.

"What?" she responds as she looks at the couple, letting a little too much anger come out of her voice, which the two boys notice. "It's just cause they haven't got to talk in a while and they're dating and we just want you guys to be friends" Dustin rambles, trying to ease El as much as he can.

Both Will and Dustin expect an angry outburst from El, but her brows only furrow in confusion, "dating?" she asks. Will's eyes go wide, stepping a bit behind El, but she doesn't notice. Dustin stutters for a bit "well… like, y-you know, like… boyfriend and girlfriend?" his voice gets a little high pitched at the end of the sentence, hoping this will be enough for El.

"Boyfriend and girlfriend?"

At this point, Will is emphatically swinging his hand across his neck to signal to him that this conversation needs to end. Luckily, Dustin gets the message and quickly tries to finish the conversation, "ask me again later?" he nervously suggests. El slumps her shoulders and lets out a quick and bitter "fine" as she looks back at Lucas and Max, finally sitting down.

…

El's knees need no second response, as the teachers "alright that's good for today" was all it took before she crashed to the ground, drenched in sweat from her mile run. Usually she was able to keep the panting and sweating to a minimum, but today she's particularly out of it, and overly tired.

She watches as most of the girls and boys make their way over to the locker rooms, but El looks up at the clock, not wanting to get up right away. She sees that they still have ten minutes left, and it only takes her around five minutes to get dressed, so she decides to sit and cool off.

She quickly realizes that that was a mistake. Not a minute in to her resting session, one of the more athletic boys walks over to her, kneeling down in front of her. "What's a sexy ass girl like you doin' out here?" he quips with an evil smirk.

El furrows her brows for a split second, not fully knowing what sexy means. She had heard it on her soap operas a few times, but could never quite place the meaning, as it was sometimes a compliment, and sometimes an insult. She figures, though, that she doesn't want to indulge him with a question, prompting him into further conversation, so she opts to ignore him.

The boys smirk slowly fades, turning into a mild disappointment, "what? You taken? If so, he's a lucky guy" he remarks, his eyes trailing down to the shorts she is wearing. But what puts El off, probably more than it should, is that glint in his eyes… El's seen it before, but only in…

She desperately shakes those thoughts from her mind, going back to the moment. Either way, she's extremely put off by his actions, she tries to back up further, but with her head leaned against the wall, there isn't much she can do. He makes no attempt to move, only narrowing his eyes in confusion, clearly questioning her not so subtle panic.

El closes her eyes and attempts to get rid of the flashbacks flooding her mind, but to no avail. The boy in front of her is only getting more confused, "what's a matter with you?" he says in a slightly disgusted voice, being put off by her fidgeting and heavy breathing.

Suddenly, a booming voice echoes through the room, "Mr. Walsh, Ms. Hopper, shouldn't you two be heading to your locker rooms?" he asks. The boy lifts up his knees again, muttering something unintelligible and walking over to the boys locker room. El makes no attempt to move, not caring what the teacher's reaction is, she simply sits with her eyes closed and lets this moment wash over her.

_It's okay, it's okay, breathe, breathe, in and out_

The calming voice of Hopper enters her mind, but it doesn't get better, the flashbacks of the lab becoming more potent. She feels a hand touch her shoulder, "Jane, are you okay?" he asks with concern in his voice.

El remembers English, Computer Science, History… three more gruesome hours of work. This has never happened at school before, so she doesn't know whether she should go home. She decides to let it out and hope the teachers have the right opinion.

"Panic attack…" she whispers, eyes still glued shut, and breathing still rapid. She can't see the man's face, but after a moment of silence he speaks up again, "over that kid?", she can feel the amusement in his voice, and it makes her angry.

_Obviously not over him…_ she thinks. But she knows it was, at least whatever he did, that triggered her response. Her breathing starts to get more rapid, which seems to be an indicator for the teacher that he needs to act.

"Don't worry, we'll get you to the nurse… you wanna change out of those clothes?" he asks, to which El doesn't respond. She doesn't want to go back in there, to all the girls that didn't have her trauma, her "papa".

"Okay, you'll have to come with me, Jane" he says in a relatively compassionate voice. El opens her eyes, and sees the teachers face of concern turn to one of worry, noticing the tears that are forming in her eyes. "It'll be okay" he says as he opens out his hand, El sniffles hardly, trying to keep the tears at bay, and grabs his hand.

…

Hopper stops his big police car in what feels like a ghost town of a school parking lot. Obviously there were the cars of teachers and staff, but it's jarring to see it without all of the parents dropping their hyperactive kids off in the morning.

He had gotten a call a little bit after his lunch break, the school nurse telling him that his daughter had a panic attack, and he rushed there with half a bagel still in his mouth. He grabs the hat from the passenger seat and slumps out of his car, the rush of adrenaline leaving his system.

His head wages a great war between two conflicting sides. One wants to beat himself up for ever allowing her to go to school and be afraid without him, but another telling him that this is inevitable, and Owens is a doctor.

The mental battle that carries on slows his movements, as he tries to determine what face he should wear when seeing El in her current spot. Compassion is definitely what she needed right now, but he doesn't know how upset she'll be at him for everything he's done, which seems to be a recurring pattern that emerges every time he tries to talk to her for any significant amount of time.

Before he knows it, however, he's at the door to the nurses office. He raises his fist and knocks twice, almost using the secret knock through sheer instinct.

Within the next second, the Nurse opens the door with a smile, but a weary look in her eyes, and ushers for him to come in. He looks around the all white room for a short moment before his eyes land on her.

She wears a black t-shirt and short shorts, and he laughs a little. Even if it wasn't the dead of winter, you'd never catch her wearing anything like that willingly. Hopper had bought her those kind of clothes before, but the bright colors and showing of skin was never her style.

She fiddles with Sara's blue bracelet, breathing steadily out of her nose with her puffy red eyes closed.

"Jane?" he says, even though to him it sounds unnatural to call her anything other than Eleven or El. She opens her eyes, placing them on the gruff man before her. "Hi dad…" she says with a weak voice, high pitched and on the verge of tears. Hopper's heart immediately softens as he walks over and kneels down to hug her.

She embraces it and hugs back, burying her face in his chest. A part of him is shocked that she isn't sending him flying with her powers. _Maybe this school thing really is calming her down_, he thinks to himself.

After a quiet moment, he pulls back, still holding El by the shoulders; she continues to look down. "Mr. Ericson came in with Jane, said she had a panic attack" the nurse explains in her southern accent. Hopper nods and turns back to El, putting his fingers on her chin to usher her face up, "you wanna go home?" he asks, giving her a _we're not done talking about this_ look. "Yes" El replies.

Hopper stands up and turns to the nurse, "we're gonna head home. You shouldn't be too worried about this, sometimes she'll get attacks like these-" Hopper explains, but is cut off by the nurse, "I know chief, Mr. Coleman told me about her parents" she responds. "I'll excuse her absence for her next teachers"

"Thank you, Ma'am" Hopper replies, looking back to El, "you got your real clothes?"

"Yes" she says again.

…

Hopper puts his foot on the gas pedal as they drive home. El feels a strange sort of giddiness at the prospect of getting to spend the rest of her day at home, but she's still afraid of the panic attack she had not an hour ago.

It isn't long before Hopper speaks up, anxious to hear about what happened. "Was it about Mike?" he asks, causing El to sigh in regret and bitterness, "no" she whispers, not very excited to talk about her papa again. Her dad remains silent, ushering her to continue, "papa…"

"Brenner?" he wonders aloud, a little thrown for a loop. She hadn't even had a nightmare of Brenner since Mike died… this isn't normal.

"Why was it about him?" Hopper asks, El scrunches up, feeling overwhelming shame at her thoughts. At why it was about him. _Mike says private_

_Mike says private. Mike says private. Mike says private._

"I don't know" she lies weakly, shrugging her shoulders. Hopper heaves a large sigh, "El…", he responds; El looks down in shame. "Was it something that happened at school?"

"Obviously" she bites back with her new favorite word. "El, please. I need you to talk to me"

"No…" she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

"El you ca-"

"NO!" she shouts. Hopper's face turns red, but he stays silent, leaving El to consider her outburst. She looks down, to the left, to the right, at her watch, at her bracelet, at her clothes… she wishes so desperately there's a room to run to, a door to slam, a blanket to hide under, but they're in a moving car, so they have to sit with the awkwardness.

Hopper doesn't know what to say. _I struck a nerve with her, obviously, but how?_ He doesn't understand. All he knows is that she isn't gonna let it out now, so he lets the awkwardness play out, if anything he'll use the awkwardness as punishment, even though it's painful for him too.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the end of anything, as the worst is yet to come.

**February 1st, 1985**

"As for rhetorical appeals, there are three, logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos is an appeal to logic and reason, ethos, an appeal to authority or a trusted individual or thing, and pathos is an appeal to the emotion…" El's english teacher continues to ramble about rhetorical appeals, using words she doesn't understand constantly.

It frustrates her to no end; every time there's a definition to a word, it's filled with other words she doesn't know. She's so out of the loop it feels like she doesn't belong, and her teachers elitist demeanor only makes it harder for her to ask questions.

So she resigns to zoning out. Thinking about her friends, what she's gonna do when she gets home, and that's about it when it comes to her boring life. Lucas has once again called an official AV club meeting, because El couldn't be there on Tuesday. And because of that, she is 100% sure something is up, as there's no reason not to continue with the meeting unless they specifically wanted her there.

Her deep thought is discontinued when she hears her teacher talk in a more commanding voice. "Now!" he says, getting all of the students' attention. "You are going to find an advertisement, be it in an article or on TV, and detail how it uses a certain rhetorical appeal. This piece is due by Friday of next week, but you will get to work with a partner" he explains; his last words causing most of the students to look around excitedly at one another, however the teacher raises his finger.

"Don't get too excited, I will be assigning partners" a collective groan is heard across the classroom, as the teacher begins to explain, "in life, cooperation is essential to being successful, and you are not always going to have a say in whom you cooperate with". However, this does little to console the class, as they all wear frowns or semi-frowns on their faces.

The teacher proceeds to grab a purple cup with a bunch of popsicle sticks with names on them, and then yanks two at random.

El shifts in her seat nervously, not wanting to end up with someone that thinks she's weird. _I don't want to be with a boy_, she resolves to herself… _I don't want to be with a girl_, she also realizes. Neither sex is particularly appealing to her right now; she doesn't want to work with anyone.

It's only after most students' names are listed that she begins to worry about another thing… she hasn't been picked yet. _What if there's an odd amount of people, and I have to work alone_, she ponders.

_That's a good thing, I don't want to work with anyone_

_That's a bad thing, I don't want to be the only one working alone_

She shuffles in her seat again as she sees one last popsicle stick. It must be her… he hasn't said her name yet and there's only one left. The teacher raises it up and turns it sideways to read the name, "Ms. Mayfield… that can't be right, I know I have an even number of kids in my class" he says.

El is both relieved and all the more worried at the same time. She doesn't know who Ms. Mayfield is, but it's not her, so is that a good thing or a bad thing?

After a while of silence, with the teacher scanning the room and looking at his sticks, his brows lift up in realization. "Ah! Ms. Hopper" he says, making all eyes fall on her; El's face instantly turns red.

"You only joined our class so recently, I don't have a popsicle stick of you!" he says in a giddish tone, relieved that everyone will have a partner. "So you shall be working with Ms. Mayfield" he says as he points over to the other end of the room.

And it's her…

That redhead… _Max_

El's eyes immediately widen in shock; she had no idea Max was even in this class, and it looks like she thought the same.

After Max looks at the teacher and gives him a fake smile, she puts her hands over her face so El doesn't see her. She is not looking forward to this, without her friends to protect her.

"So! I trust you're all familiar with your partners, so group with them and get to work!" he says as he walks back over to his desk to grade papers. Instantly, most of the kids shoot up out of their desks to meet their partners. El doesn't.

She doesn't want to see her, she doesn't want to talk to her. _She got to stay with Mike… she wanted Mike all to herself_

Once most of the pairs settle on the floor or in some desks, the fluctuating noise of the kids evens out to a steady talkative environment, like they were in the cafeteria. El keeps her face glued to her desk, knowing how awkward and antisocial it makes her look but at the same time not wanting to face Max.

She sees a looming shadow hover over her desk, and she can feel her presence. El hears a deep breath and the sound of the girl moving over to the desk beside her, and sitting down.

"Hey… El"

_She can't call me El! Mike calls me El!_, she thinks, but stops herself from saying out loud because everyone calls her Jane. So she opts to say nothing at all.

"We didn't really get to meet… but I was there that night," Max says, looking at her with hopeful eyes, wishing she would at least acknowledge her existence.

El wrestles with her current situation in her head. The responsible and nice side of El wants to be polite to her at the very least, even if she doesn't want to be friends with her. But everytime her mind slips a little too much on the caring side, the devil on her shoulder reawakens, reminding her of what she did.

The battle in her head prevents her from speaking, and she hears Max sigh again. "El… I want us to be friends, I think you know that" she says. After another bout of silence, Max continues, "but I don't know why you're mad at me, I just wanna know what I did so I won't do it again" she reasons.

Max is reminded of Mike, and the way he acted around her for no discernible reason. She thought he was lovesick over El, and was getting mad because Max was being invited into the party, but her theory was shot down after she tried to be sincere with him at the house, talking about El and whatnot, but he continued to berate her.

She honestly doesn't know what to think. She was never super close to Mike, and she doesn't even know El at all, but they were obviously in love.

But it still doesn't answer why they _both_ seem to be mad at her. Lucas explained to her that she was basically upset with everyone right now, but at least she bothers to hang out with the boys, and it also doesn't explain why she didn't shake Max's hand that night.

Her inner distresses are ended with the smallest of peeps from El. "I'll get the article" she whispers coldy, as she gets up out of her seat and moves to the shelf filled with magazines.

Max makes no attempts to complain, and sits awkwardly as she awaits El's arrival with newfound dread. Eventually, El comes back with a random article and flops it down on Max's desk rudely. She makes a sigh, this time of annoyance.

She knows she has to be gentle with El, but this is testing her patience.

Max quickly shifts through each page without much thought, pretending like she's putting deep thought into each ad, and that's her reason for not talking to El. After a good minute of searching, she finishes the last page and shrugs her shoulders.

"I can't find anything good" she explains; El gives her a confused look, "you bare-aly even checked" she says, swiping the magazine from Max's arms.

"That's okay, you check" she jokes after she takes it from her, hoping to get some sort of reaction from El, but she once again furrows her brow, "I already have it" El retorts with an exasperated voice.

"I was kidding" Max tries to explain, but it comes out as a meek excuse rather than what she would regularly say. _That's it. I'm not letting El do this_, she resolves to herself.

"So, how have you been these past few months?"

"What's it to you?" El asks coldly, keeping her eyes on the magazine; she remembers that saying because her dad would always use it when talking to her.

"C'mon, El… I think you're being kind of unfair" she finally lets out, mentally wincing at how honest she's being. She so far has no real respect for El, but she's determined to at least _understand_ her.

"What do you know about unfair?" El bites back, shifting her eyes to the redhead. Max isn't an idiot, she knows there's a lot El' said in that one response. But it's true.

Max hasn't always had it easy, an abusive brother and dad, a nasty divorce, having no real friends except for Lucas and kind of Dustin and _technically_ Mike, but El was raised in a lab and physically and mentally tortured until she escaped, only to lose the one person she cares about the most in this world. The mere thought saddens Max, and she can clearly empathize with her, but it doesn't explain El's behavior to _her_.

"I just wanna know what I did to make you mad at me"

El scoffs, looking back down at the magazine and continuing to scan papers. _What am I supposed to say to that?_ Max wonders, letting silence play out for a little bit. She continues to allow El to skim through the magazine, but almost jumps when she hears El speak up again.

"You got to see Mike… when I was stuck in the cabin" El whispers; Max opens her mouth to speak, but stops when she sees El's hurting face, eyebrows shifted upward in a look of regret.

There's a million comebacks in Max's mind, a million reasons as to why that's a stupid explanation, but she sees El about to continue, so she, miraculously, keeps quiet.

"A-and then when I see him… he d-d" El can't finish the sentence, she rather closes her eyes and uses all her strength to keep herself from crying.

Max doesn't have a retort to this. It's not _her_ fault that this happened, after all, it was Mike's idea to go into the caves. But she gets the feeling that both El and Max know this to be true, and El's just caught between a rock and a hard place.

"I was there… when you fell off your skateboard at the school… you were talking to Mike"

Max widens her eyes in realization. _So you did that_, she thinks to herself, but keeps it there. _Should I hug her? Too fast… should I calm her down? What if she just yells at me_. Max treads the delicate line that is Jane Hopper, debating with herself what to say or not say.

El's tormented face suddenly turns into a rather frightening, to Max at least, scowl, "you wanted Mike all to yourself!" she practically shouts. Max instantly darts her head around the room, and to her relief sees that no one seems to have noticed. She looks back to El who's still eyeing daggers at her. She finally takes in exactly what El had said, and lets her patience slip, if just a little.

"That's bullshit!" she exclaims in a whisper voice. The challenging of El's dominance catches her off guard, and she widens her eyes just a little in shock. "Just because I'm a girl and I was talking to a boy doesn't mean I'm into him! I'm literally dating Lucas!" Max continues, making El shake her head and scoff once again.

"I don't care if you're 'dating' Lucas, you tried to take Mike away from me!" El childishly retorts, making Max let out a laugh at how absurd she's being. "That doesn't even make sense! Do you even _know_ what dating is?"

After a second of strange silence, El looks down, "no… but it doesn't mat-"

"It sure as hell does matter!" Max cuts her off, sick at the realization that this was all just some petty jealousy from a girl who probably didn't know any better.

"If I'm dating him, that means we're boyfriend and girlfriend" she explains, and El looks back up at her.

"Well what's that?" she asks in an annoyed voice.

"It means that we're interested in each other!... I don't know, we kiss, hold hands…" Max tries to explain, but she sees El's face and knows she's not getting anywhere.

"When you have a boyfriend, it means they're extra special to you, and sometimes if they're _really_ special to you, then you marry and have kids and all that shit" Max teaches, hoping that El would get some sort of message.

_Really special_. El learned what marriage is through soap operas. When she first discovered the TV back when her hair had only grown out a little bit, she became infatuated with each and every couple, kissing and marrying and falling in love. She would always sit right in front of the TV, and daydream about her and Mike marrying and kissing all day. _Does that mean Lucas and Max are going to marry?_ She wonders to herself.

But she finds that the devil on her shoulder does not like this new information. She imagines Lucas and Max kissing… holding hands, hugging, telling each other _I love you_, and marrying. Max is in a gorgeous white gown, and Lucas in a smooth black tux. _I do_, they would both say. All of their friends would be there, and it would be the happiest moment of their lives.

A moment that El spent a year daydreaming would happen to her… it won't now. She'll never marry another, she cares about Mike too much, and she'll never love anyone again.

She can't be happy, but they can.

_I can't be happy… but Max can._

El snaps, practically jumping from her desk and rushing out of the room, too fast and too silently for even the teacher to notice. Max sits for a second, taking in all of the information. If she's going to see her later today for her "AV club initiation", which she knows is just a poorly disguised ploy to get Max and El in the same room, then she can't let it end like this.

Glancing to make sure the teacher isn't watching her, Max races out of the classroom. The hallway is expectedly sparse, with no one in this particular hall besides El, who is speed walking away from the door. Max chases after her.

"El!" she shouts to get her attention, not bothering to keep her voice level in a whisper. El turns around to look at her with a _what do you want?_ face, tears forming in her eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" she asks, probably a little harsher sounding than she meant it to be.

"Don't want to talk to you" El mutters with as much spite as she can muster. Max practically gasps. "C'mon El! I'm trying to be nice, I'm trying to be a friend because I know what you're going through… and there aren't that many people who actually do" Max exclaims, alluding to their big secret.

"I don't care" El responds, turning around, but Max grabs her arm.

"No no no, you are _not_ going to act like such a bitch!"

"W-"

"No! You listen to me! I've literally done nothing wrong! And I'm trying super hard to be a good person, and you're treating me like crap, just like Mike!"

"You're trying to be my friend like it's out of the goodness of your heart!" El bites back, looking at her face to face, both with intense stares. She continues, "you can say _sorry_, you can say you _care_… but it doesn't mean anything because you've had it good compared to me!"

"Yeah right, you're the only one who's ever suffered out of everyone on the fucking planet! I have a brother that would probably rather see me dead than miss whatever stupid hookup of the day he has. My whole life has been a collection of people who hate me for no reason! Whether it's my dad, my brother, or you!"

"I don't give a shit! You have _something_! You have _Lucas_, and a _mom_, and you can speak normally, and no one scares you so much that you thought you wouldn't get to see the next day of your life if you made them mad! You're happy!"

"Who said I was just a happy and go lucky person who's always gonna have it good in life?" Max says, tears now in her eyes.

"You have a _reason_ to be happy! I have nothing! I have a bad and ugly feeling and I just want it to go away but it won't go away no matter what I do!" El exclaims, tears now fully cascading down her red face.

"You're just fucking jealous!"

"N-"

"No! You're just jealous because I have Lucas and you wanna take that from me! All because YOU don't realize that you can't have Mike back! He's fucking dead! Just get the hell over it and stop being such an asshole to me!"

El's tear stained face stops, her heart stops, her lungs stop, her brain stops. The ugly feeling… it comes back in full force and makes her want to _stop_. She doesn't want to do this anymore, she _can't_ do this anymore. _She's right. Mike's just fucking dead_.

Silence overcomes the two teens as they both begin to realize just what they said, or at least Max does. El doesn't feel anything.

"El… I'm so sorry" Max says sincerely, but El is already deaf. The ugly feeling consumes her, and she faints.

…

El wakes up in a cold sweat, stuttering to catch her breath before she opens her eyes. She sits up in whatever kind of bed she's in right now, knowing that it can't be her own. She's terrified… she had a terrifying dream, even if she couldn't remember it if her life depended on it.

She slowly opens her eyes, letting the bright white walls attack her. For the shortest of seconds, she thinks she's back in the lab, and after a few more seconds of consideration, she chuckles at the thought.

What if it was all a dream? What if she never even met Mike? What if it was just a test conducted by the bad men to invade her dreams and make her think she's been free for a whole year.

Would that be so bad?

She quickly realizes that she's once again in the nurse's room, lying on a cheap polyester bed with what can only be described as the blanket equivalent of a dirty tissue. She instantly throws the blanket off and scrubs off the germs, even if it won't do much. After getting her bearings, she turns to her left to see Lucas, Dustin, and Will.

Will has a concerned look, which El is starting to think is just a permanent position on his face, but she appreciates it nonetheless. She looks slightly to her right to see Dustin, who has less of a compassionate look of concern, but rather one with a hint of panic and dread.

However, it's Lucas she can't decipher. He's clearly _really_ trying to look sorry or sad or concerned, but she can see the contempt, or at the very least, annoyance, in his eyes. Because El was never good with speech, she became quite skilled at reading people's faces, so it isn't a problem for her to know exactly why Lucas is upset.

He's dating _Max_… of course he's going to be upset that they're currently hating each other. She imagines how Mike might react to something like this if El and him were dating, but she shakes the thought away at how much it saddens her.

"What time is it?" El lets out, having no clue as to how much time has passed. Will sighs in response, probably because he knows that that shouldn't be her first question. Lucas continues to remain silent, and it's only Dustin who answers. "It's 2:39" he says as he lifts up his sleeve to check his wrist watch.

El rolls her eyes to herself as she realizes that she too has a watch, and she could have checked it. A heavy silence hangs over the four again, as El shifts in her bed to sit up higher. Finally, Lucas sighs and speaks up, "what happened, El?"

El sighs, putting on a regretful face to Lucas, "I fainted…" she says innocently; Lucas shakes his head. "No, I mean what happened between you and Max? I tried to talk to her but she was in a crying fit and she skateboarded home" he explains, his voice slightly high pitched to reflect his grievance.

El tries to keep her disdain from being too obvious, although she suspects Will is catching on, "sorry. We got in an argument"

"Yeah, I got that much" Lucas says with just as much disdain as El, challenging her very limited patience. "She said Mike was fucking dead! And I should just get over it!" she says in a raised, but not a bellowing, voice.

"Language!" the nurse calls from afar.

"What?!" Will gasps, keeping his voice to a relative whisper; shock and anger now formed on his face. Dustin wore a similar if a less intense look of shock, and Lucas narrowed his eyes in skepticism.

"Are you _sure_ that's what she said?" he asks, not fully believing that Max would say something like that. El opens her mouth, stuttering in shock, "wha-... you don't believe me?" she bites back. Lucas raises both of his hands in a calming gesture, "I'm just saying, that's probably not the full story. She wouldn't say something _that_ mean"

"Well she _did_, okay?!" El exclaims, making the nurse hop out of her chair and speed walk over to her, "is everything okay over here?" she asks with that signature teacher look; wanting the shouting to stop, but clearly not caring enough to wonder why they're shouting in the first place.

"Yeah…" the four kids say in unison, which seems to be enough for her. "Are you gonna be okay to meet your dad in fifteen minutes?" she asks. El nods, doing a terrible job at hiding her frown. The nurse nods back and walks away back to her desk, "no shouting!" she _shouts_ as she waddles away.

El scoffs, looking back to her friends, who she now wants nothing to do with. "Leave me alone" she states coldy, turning her head around to stare at the wall. "El, c'mo-" Dustin begins but is cut off.

"Leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you guys"

Will sighs, giving El a puppy dog eyed look, even though she can't see him. "El, if you need us, you can just tell us… we care about you"

"It's true, El" Dustin adds in. The boys see El sigh, and Will considers this a job well done, _at least she won't stay mad at us_, he thinks to himself. But his hopeful feeling is squashed as he hears Lucas cut in again.

"No El! We're your friends, and we care about you, but you can't treat us like this!" Lucas exclaims, keeping his voice low enough so that the nurse doesn't berate them. El doesn't react, she only keeps her back turned.

"You can't treat Max like that either, I actually care about her, and it sucks to see you two like this" he continues, but to no avail.

"Lucas, lets just give her some alone time" Dustin ushers with his arm, beginning to walk away with Will. Lucas hesitates for a second, but reluctantly follows his friends without another word, El's back still turned.

Fifteen minutes pass, and the school bell rings, with a bundle of kids who are also in the office, probably feigning sickness, jumping out of their seats and running out of there. The nurse notices El, who hasn't moved, and walks up to her.

"Sweetie? School's out…" she reminds her. She sees El wipe her eyes and sniffle, and when she turns around, her face is red and tear stained. "Thank you" she lets out, before shifting out of the office. The nurse lets out a sigh, she knows she's going to be seeing more of that little girl.

El subconsciously makes her way to the bike rack off of muscle memory, but realizes that none of her friends are going to be there. She sighs to herself, making a ninety degree turn over to the parking lot. Luckily, Hopper's car sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of minivans and Ford-F series.

She opens the car door quickly and shuts it just as fast, resting her head on the window frame and staring longingly at the sky. She imagines being a bird; small and not worth noticing, normal, and pretty. She could fly away from this mess.

Flying higher and higher until she reached the city on the clouds she's heard so much about… where Mike might be.

"That was pretty quick, I barely just got to the school" Hopper's gruff voice ceases her fantasy, trying to make conversation. "Had an argument with Max" El lets out, keeping her eyes in the skies. Hopper furrows his brows for a second, letting out a monotone "uhhh" before looking back at her through the rearview mirror.

"Isn't that the kid who was at the house?"

"Yes. I fainted"

Hopper turns his body around to face her, "you what?" he says with a mixture of shock and disbelief. "Can I just talk to Owens about it later… please?" she asks, giving Hopper those signature puppy-dog eyes.

She doesn't want to talk to Owens about it either, but at least this way it'll get Hopper off her back. The police chief sighs and shifts his eyes back to the road, pulling out of the parking lot and making his way home.

**February 6th, 1985**

El is not having a good day. This morning, she woke up in a cold sweat, straight from a nightmare. They're getting worse.

Her dream wasn't that scary, not at all. It was just a dream with her at school... and Mike was there. He held her hand, calmed down the fight between her and Max, told the guy who was hitting on her in gym to back off, and making her feel so so special.

Usually when she has nightmares, she's extremely scared during the whole thing, but this time, she felt a strange sensation that she hadn't felt since Mike called her pretty in the bathroom, over a year ago.

Happiness.

When she woke up, it dawned on her that it wasn't real, and she cried hard. The ugly feeling came back with a vengeance, and she threw around her pillows and covers until her room looked like a tornado.

And here she is, in the middle of her second period math class, looking at the results of her latest test. Granted, a C+ isn't the end of the world, but all she can focus on are the red markings that litter her paper. She wanted to go ask Lucas what his test results were, but she remained in her seat.

Over the past couple of days, she felt an odd hostility coming from Lucas. She knows they didn't leave on the happiest of terms, but she doesn't feel comfortable around him at math class anymore. Since Friday, she's made no attempts to talk to him, and clearly, he hasn't either. But this is her first true test. She has every reason to go up and ask, which is more than she can say about her other encounters with him over Monday and Tuesday, and no reason to stay behind… or does she?

She shakes her head. _What am I thinking?_ She thinks to herself, sighing inwardly. _Why is this so hard?_ She fights back angry tears.

_Why can't Mike be with me? I just want Mike…_

She was always such a scared and lonely person, and Mike was something she could fall back on when she was confused or alone, because she could trust him to be himself. She fell in love with that person, and he's gone.

It isn't about the grades anymore, but El puts her head down over the packet, hiding her red face from the class that she's sure noticed her looking so stressed out.

…

After a good minute of trying, El finally manages to open her locker without her powers, something she's been getting better and better at doing since Will forced her to try. She dares a glance at her calendar, darting her eyes back to their original position after not being able to look at it for more than a second.

She opens the zipper on her backpack and puts her English notebook and folder back. Speaking of, that class, while never a walk in the park, is particularly painful nowadays.

On Monday, she was met with Max profusely apologizing for what she said the other day, and while El didn't really care, she felt the sincerity behind her apology, and reciprocated, telling Max that she was sorry too. She wasn't.

The next day, Max was a little less on edge, at least from what El noticed. Maybe it was El's apology that gave Max the confidence she needed to continue, maybe it was something else, but it didn't matter. They didn't end up yelling profanities at each other and they made good progress with their project, so that was a good day for both of them.

Every time El would talk with her friends, they always got hopeful when she mentioned Max, most of all Lucas, who would actually speak up to El on those occasions, something he seldom did recently. El always responded with "I don't know" or something of the sort, sometimes just shrugging her shoulders and changing the subject.

She doesn't think she'll ever be able to actually _like_ Max after everything that's happened, but a part of her is starting to realize it isn't really her fault.

She talked to Doctor Owens yesterday, especially about Max and everything that happened. She didn't think she would want to tell him, but Owens has always had a special way of connecting to her.

He told her that her anger stage was ending, and soon she would be moving on to _bargaining_, which he didn't explain. She looked up bargaining in the dictionary, and was utterly confused as to how she could _feel_ bargaining.

Either way, the week, although it only being halfway done, has been long and arduous. Today, Max seemed to be a lot more out of it than she usually is. She was chilled out and tired, not seeming to care at all about how El reacted to what she said or what she did, which confused her, but she welcomed the less talkative version of Max.

She searches around in her backpack for a bit, wondering what she'll need for her next class. "Hey El", she hears the voice of Will call behind her, before she sees him walk up next to her and open up her locker. Usually they would try to make some kind of conversation, but for some odd reason they don't. It isn't awkward, at least not to El, so she lets it pass as she fiddles around in her locker.

She hears Will turn to his right and exclaim "hey guys!", moving over to where Lucas and Dustin had just came from and greeting them. "Hey Will, hey El" Dustin says. Lucas stays silent, with a half smile on his face, probably from seeing Will.

The three exchange pleasantries as El continues to move her hands around her locker. She already has everything for her next period, but she needs to look like she has a reason not to talk to her friends, out of some strange desire to keep to herself.

"Well well well, if it isn't midnight, toothless, and the fairy!" a new and malevolent voice comes from El's right, a voice she swears she's heard before. "Now I wanna know how you little shits managed to beat me in that kickball game… what was it, some sort of stupid science shit?" the boy laughs at his own comment, and El finally moves the locker door away so she can see his face.

It's the kid that always winked at her in gym class, the one who always shoved Lucas and Dustin while they were running, the one who gave her the panic attack when he tried to talk to her, and the one she coincidentally used her powers on to beat during a game of kickball earlier today.

"Look Troy, we didn't do anything, it was just some luck, that's all" Lucas tries to explain with his back against the locker as the boy, now known to be Troy, stares him in the eyes. _Troy_, El swears she's heard that name before… somewhere. The name sounds familiar, but she can't put her finger on it. Will turns his head around to give El a worried look, which makes her confused, _is this just some bully?_

"Ain't no way it was just good luck, I saw the ball float in the air for gods sake"

"C'mon Troy, what do you want us to tell you?"

Troy cracks a smirk, "I think I can forget about this little incident, and let you guys go this time around, on one condition"

"What do you want?" Lucas asks, beginning to lose his patience. Troy eyes him with a sick glint in his eyes. "I know you hang out with that chick during gym every day, you get me her number by tomorrow, and we'll forget this ever happened," he explains, patting Lucas' shoulders aggressively.

It occurs to El that, despite her being only a few feet away from him, he has neglected to notice her. _Am I that chick? What is chick?_ She thinks to herself, but not aloud. If he really _is_ talking about her, then she doesn't know whether she should speak or not. She debates with herself whether she should continue to act like nothing is happening and check her locker, or continue watching.

"That's not happening Troy, she's not that kinda girl", Dustin attempts to defend, and Troy's evil smirk turns into a nasty frown. "Maybe she is and she just don't know it yet" he says, and makes a dirty laugh. This results in a hard shove from Dustin, "leave her alone Troy"

Troy doesn't push back, but simply straightens his stature so he's standing tall compared to Dustin. "What's it to you, freak?" the use of the word makes El shiver, having been called that once or twice.

"We both know you're not dating her, I mean look at you" he quips, seeming genuinely amused at his own joke. Dustin shakes his head, "I'm serious, dude, let it go"

Troy stands for a second, slowly inching his way up to Dustin, "what are you gonna do about it toothless? I don't see Mike anywhere to stand up for team nerd"

Dustin's eyes droop down and he lets out a sigh, "leave. us. alone." Lucas interjects, pushing his index finger into the bully's chest with each word. Troy smiles wickedly once again.

"Oh no!" he puts his hands to his heart and mocks concern, "what are we gonna do with out Mike? Now we don't have a president of the nerd club, boo hoo!"

El feels herself stiffen with each word, the pain of Mike hitting her like a semi, throbbing pain coursing through her body. The ugly feeling returns, making her want to leave this school and never come back, she closes her eyes.

Her friends all have equally pained faces, which seems to make Troy laugh, "frogface isn't here to jump off a cliff for you anymore, toothless" he laughs.

_Jump off a cliff_…

Of course! How could El not see it before! This was the boy who threatened Dustin with a knife, and forced Mike to jump off a cliff.

_"I was tripped by this mouthbreather Troy, okay?"_

_"Mouthbreather?"_

_"Yeah, you know, a dumb person. A knucklehead"_

_"Knucklehead?"_

_"I don't know why I just didn't tell you... everyone at school knows. I just didn't want you to think I was such a wastoid, you know"_

_"Mike..."_

_"Yeah?"_

_"I understand"_

_"Oh. Okay... cool"_

_"Cool..."_

An intense anger fills her whole body…

"What? You gonna cry? Just another stupid ass freak that kicked the bucket… one less problem if you ask me-"

_Slam!_

El throws her locker door shut, so loud that it gets the attention of almost the entire hallway, including Troy. He looks up and immediately smirks. "Oh! I thought I could find you hanging out with these freaks, what do you say me and you ditch these losers" he says in a sudden flirtatious voice.

El wears a terrifying frown as she walks up to him, giving him the "eleven" stare. Her breathing becomes a bit more rapid with each step, and Troy fidgets around uncomfortably as she slowly makes her way over to him, put off by her obvious hatred.

"What's got you so upset?" he keeps his cocky voice up, closing the distance between El and him so they're only inches apart. El looks up at him with an indomitable rage.

The other three kids all give varying looks. Will continues looking down, holding back hot tears. Lucas looks down as well, but seemingly in a rage rather than sadness, and Dustin closes his eyes, knowing this'll end the same way it did at the quarry.

"Why don't you come with me and I'll get to know you a little bet-" Troy can't finish his sentence. At the moment, he's too busy getting a fist thrown at his left cheek. He stumbles back a little, in both surprise and in pain. His eyes widen at the realization of his cut lip and he stares right back at her, "you're dead, you bitch"

Troy moves back up to her, practically speed walking, but El's prepared. She gathers all of the pain, the hate, the pure rage she's been doing her damndest to bottle up for the past month, and swiftly knees him in the nuts. Troy recoils in pain, moving his hands to his sensitive area, but El doesn't relent.

She throws her fists his way again, swing after swing after swing. Her right fist to his face, then her left, and so on until he begins to bruise. She grunts in pain with each swing, feeling the blunt force she puts into each punch attack her knuckles, but she doesn't care, and she doesn't relent.

She begins to use her powers in a subtle way, significantly boosting her strength. If she's been doing that the whole time, or if she's only now just deciding to use them, she doesn't know, and she doesn't care, and she doesn't relent.

Tears begin to fall down her face, but she continues punching him, eventually grabbing him by either shoulder and throwing him into the locker, a feat of strength she definitely couldn't do without her powers. He crashes to the floor and pathetically squeals in pain again. She gets on her knees and begins to pummel him, raising each arm up sky high and sending it downward with as much telekinetic boosted force she can muster.

"Hey! Young lady!" she hears the voice of a teacher call from behind her. Without a second thought, she sends him falling to the floor, making it look like he tripped, and each time he attempts to get up, she puts him back down again.

El is sobbing her eyes out right now, but she does not care. She imagines this as the person that has caused all of her pain, all of her suffering, all of her torment, and bashes him to the ground.

"El! Please, stop!" she hears Will call from behind. The urgent but still calming voice of Will is enough to snap her out of whatever frenzy she's in. She looks down at her work, seeing the bloodied, borderline unrecognizable face of Troy. She dissolves into a fresh batch of tears.

She doesn't regret her actions, but the ugly feeling has become so overwhelming it begins to shut her body down. She doesn't know what's real anymore, and everything becomes fuzzy. She wants more than anything to destroy the school with her powers, make it look like an earthquake, and she definitely could, but somehow she restrains herself.

She simply buries her face in her hands and wails, as everyone in the hallway watches her with terrified looks. Two security agents rush over and grab the boy by his shoulders and feet. "MISS HOPPER" she hears the booming voice of principal Coleman echo through to the other end of the hallway. "IN MY OFFICE, IMMEDIATELY"

She quickly stands up, a new frown adorning her face, her eyes puffy and red, and she speed walks behind the principal in anger.

"El…" she hears the voice of Dustin behind her, and a hand touch her arm, but she shakes it off and continues walking.

**And I know this is only 10,000 words, but I still think that's an average enough length. The argument between El and Max and the fight she has with Troy were some of the first scenes I ever though up when I began writing this story, so I hope you enjoyed those. Next chapter is titled Bargaining, and will be filled with interesting moments and payoff for **_**some**_ **of the things I set up, so I hope you guys enjoyed and the next chapter **_**should**_ **be up by at least Tuesday of next week.**

**(but of course take that with a grain of salt)**

**Thank you!**

-Y


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